A Dark Heart (29 page)

O’Connor smirked at Elijah’s agitation and whistled as he continued
backing away. “Look at that rage. A thing of beauty you always were, Laddie.
Took after yer mother, you did. Even with that scar, you’re a sight to behold. You
know I prefer them younger, but I was willing to make an exception for you. I
had such plans, now that I’d found you again.”

“Are you trying to make me kill you?” he growled, following O’Connor
deeper into the chamber.

O’Connor grinned, revealing that damned chipped tooth. “Just a slip of
the knife is all that it would take. Do you think you’re fast enough? Think you
can get to me before I cut the lad’s throat open?”

Elijah couldn’t take the chance that he wasn’t, and they both knew it.

“So I’ll talk all I want,” the man continued, taking another step
backwards, skirting dangerously near to the device, its burgeoning power
tugging at his hair and clothes.

“Please,
please
don’t hurt him,” Hex pleaded next to him, tears
streaming down her blood-streaked face.

“I won’t, if he’s lucky. Perhaps I’ll take him with me. He’s daft in the
head, this one, but a fair piece. He’ll make a fine toy.”

Elijah surged forward with an agonized roar, just barely checking himself
before O’Connor could make good on his threat and slit the lad’s throat. “The
hell you will,” he gritted out.

O’Connor cocked a brow. “Who’s to say I haven’t had him already?” he said
silkily, licking his fat lips with a disgusting leer. “Who’s to say he didn’t
like it, just as much as you used to, Laddie?”

Hex let out a strangled cry that mirrored his own. Elijah knew O’Connor
was lying, but just the thought of the man touching Hector in that way made him
crazy.

O’Connor looked satisfied with the hit he’d scored and laughed wildly,
stumbling back a few more steps. “Oh the things I shall do…”

Suddenly, the man’s words ceased, his mouth falling open, his body going
rigid. His grip on Hector slackened, and the hand holding the knife fell
uselessly to his side.

Hector fell to the ground and ran straight into Hex’s arms. The woman
clutched the boy tight, rocking him back and forth and sobbing with relief.

O’Connor looked as disbelieving as Elijah felt at the sudden turn of
events, a trickle of blood beginning to drip from the corner of his mouth. He
fell to his knees, then face forward onto the damp stone floor, a long dagger protruding
from the back of his neck.

The hand that held the dagger pulled it out and stabbed it through the
man’s fleshy back again, then again and again. Blood jetted in all directions
and coated the blade all the way to the hilt, spilling over the dainty hands
that held it.

Dainty hands, familiar hands. Elijah gaped in shock as turbulent emerald
eyes met his own from a tangle of golden hair and a pale face speckled with
O’Connor’s blood. It took several moments before he finally let himself believe
what he was seeing.

Ana.
Ana
had killed O’Connor.

CHRISTIANA
stuck the blade deep through O’Connor’s still body a final time and left it
there, rising to her feet and wiping her bloody hands on the green velvet of
her skirt. Her heart raced from the adrenaline coursing through her veins, her
breath gusting from her overworked lungs. It had as much to do with the utter
satisfaction she felt at sinking that dagger into that horrible, evil man over
and over again, as it did with the nerves it had taken to sneak up on him and
actually go through with it.

Perhaps later she would wonder what sort of person she’d become that she
could feel such … well,
glee
, in killing another human being, but not at
the moment, and not any time soon. When O’Connor had started spouting off all
of those vile things about Hector – about
Elijah
– something
inside of her had shattered. She’d pulled the dagger Rowan had given her from
its sheath at her waist, crossed behind the bastard, and stuck the blade deep,
without hesitating for one second in her purpose. That man had needed killing,
and she was glad – so very glad – to have done it. And she would
never regret it.

She finally raised her eyes from the bloody mess she’d made of O’Connor
and did a quick scan of the room. A shirtless, barefoot Brightlingsea still
worked to contain the device pulsing brightly at her back. Rowan and Sasha walked
towards them through a maze of fallen, headless corpses, blood-soaked and
grim-faced, while Hex Bartholomew clutched her son tight in her arms. The
battle was over.

Or so she thought, until she finally let herself look at Elijah. The
bright light of the device cast his face in sharp relief, his expression one of
shock and something that looked very much like grief as he stared at her with
his wide, mismatched eyes. He looked entirely human and just a little bit
helpless – he looked like she’d just broken his heart, and her own heart
sank in response. She thought she’d crumble completely as she watched a single
tear track down his dust-covered cheek. But she couldn’t crumble. Not now. And
she wouldn’t let him crumble either. She stepped over O’Connor’s body and
stalked in his direction.

“Don’t you dare cry, you ridiculous man!” she breathed.

He shook his head, at a loss. “It wasn’t supposed to end like that. You
have blood on your hands, your face …
his
blood,” he whispered.

She understood why he was upset, but she didn’t have to like it. “Don’t feel
guilty, Elijah,” she said, gripping his shoulders and shaking him. “Don’t tell
me I shouldn’t have done it.”

She pulled his head down until his forehead was nestled in the crook of
her shoulder. His arms slowly snaked around her waist, and he held her close,
tremors coursing through the long length of his body.

“I wanted to protect you. I never wanted any part of that
bastard
to touch you,” he murmured into her neck. “I hate that you heard those horrible
words, that you had to
kill
…”

She smoothed his hair, trying to gentle him. “I’d do it again. I told
you, I’d gladly kill O’Connor for you. You don’t get to do all the protecting.
You’re mine, Elijah, and I wasn’t about to let that man hurt you again.”

He raised his head and held her away from him, gazing at her in
bemusement. “You’re insane. If anything had happened to you…”

“
I
wasn’t the one in the cage,” she said primly.

He actually laughed – a little bit madly, granted. But she liked
the sound of it nonetheless, and she liked the momentary flash of amusement
across his face. Then his expression sobered once more, and he raised two
trembling hands to cup her face, wiping away the specks of blood from her
cheeks with his thumbs and staring at her as if she were the only thing in the
world.

Never mind that an army of dead vampires and a device that threatened to
consume half of London surrounded them. Never mind that Stieg Ehrengard had
once again escaped Brightlingsea’s justice, or that Rowan and Sasha and that
dreadful Mr. Parminter were no doubt bearing witness to their shamefully
indiscreet display. Elijah was alive and in her arms, and that was all that
mattered.

“I never told you I loved you,” he said softly. “It was all I could think
after I left you this morning. And to think I might have never had the chance
to …” He shivered and kissed her forehead. “But you must know, Ana. I’ve loved
you since I was eight,” he said, holding her stare, making sure she understood
every word he was saying. “And I’ve wanted you since the moment you came back
to London all those years. Every day that passed, I wanted you and loved you more
and more, until it felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I’ve been suffocating for
years, but no longer.” He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, and the tip of her
nose, and buried his head once more in the place where her neck met her
shoulder. “I love you, Ana, so very much.”

Her heart soared. As far as declarations went, that one was just about
perfect. “And I love you too, so very, very much,” she whispered, holding him
close, breathing in his scent, tracking the beating of his heart against her
own.

“Now we’ve
really
got to get out of here…” Elijah began, raising
his head. But he broke off in mid-speech, his whole body stiffening. His fangs
descended and his eyes filled with amber fire as he caught sight of something
over her shoulder.

A deep bellow of rage pierced the air behind her, and she spun around
just in time to see O’Connor, blood oozing from a mouth nearly black with
impending death, lurching in her direction, a pistol aimed straight at her
head. But at the same time that his bloated, bloody finger pulled the trigger,
a tall, broad shape moving at super-human speed crashed into him with a shout.
The shot went wild as O’Connor flew backwards, towards the device. He screamed
as the strange power of the glowing orb seized hold of him, lifting him into
the air and pulling him into its bright maw. Soon the man was completely
consumed, his screams abruptly falling silent.

But the figure who had knocked O’Connor back was unable to check his own
momentum and flew at a dangerous clip towards the bright white light. He
twisted his body away from the device, but it was too late. He was airborne,
and despite his determined fight against it, the light sucked him inexorably backwards.

It was Rowan.

“No!” cried Hex, staggering towards him as if she would follow him into
the light. Sasha held her back, though his own expression was one of horrified incredulity
as he stared at the disaster unfolding before them.

Someone else screamed, and it took a long moment for her to register that
it had come from her own lungs, and that she was on her knees. Elijah’s arms
wrapped tightly around her waist, holding her upright, as she watched Rowan’s
body retreat further and further into the light. He looked as if he couldn’t
believe what was happening to him any more than she could. The edges of his
body began to bleed into the light, the features of his face growing indistinct
from the overpowering radiance. At the last instant, he turned his head in her
direction and met her eyes, the surprise gone, a look of resignation – of
farewell – in his expression.

And then he was gone, completely consumed. Immediately afterwards, the
pulsing ball of light seemed to fold into itself again and again, until it was
no larger than the head of a pin, before disappearing entirely. The giant brass
and silver wheels slowed, and the vibrations issuing from the strange black box
ground to a halt, until nothing but the distant drip of water echoing on stone
broke the stunned silence enveloping the subterranean chamber.

She turned into Elijah’s arms and wept.

ROWAN Harker
was dead, taking away all of the joy Hex Bartholomew felt in O’Connor’s defeat
and Hector’s safe return. All she could do was cling to Hector and stare numbly
at the spot where the Earl had last appeared to her, before being swallowed up
into … nothingness.

This was not how things were supposed to end, before she’d had a chance
to understand how he was even alive in the first place. Or how he’d seemed to
have no memory of her whatsoever, even after all they had shared together. For
she knew in her heart that he was the same man she’d loved and lost a decade
ago, even though it should have been impossible. Even though he’d not been
entirely real even then.

She’d thought she’d long moved past the crippling grief of his loss, but
after the shock of yesterday – of suddenly looking up into a face that
had haunted her dreams since she was eighteen, a face she’d never expected to
see again – the grief had returned. And now …
now,
it was like
losing him a second time. And it was just as unbearable.

“It’s all my fault,” Lady Christiana murmured next to her, breaking away
from the Inspector and approaching the now dormant device. She stared up at its
massive, diamond-studded wheels, tears streaming down her beautiful,
blood-flecked face. The Inspector followed her, wrapping his arms around her
from behind and holding her tight, as if he would absorb all of the lady’s pain
into his own body.

Hex felt her heart fracture even more at the sight of their love, toxic
grief leeching into her bloodstream. Once, long ago, she’d enjoyed the comfort
of strong arms surrounding her, the unconditional, uncompromising love of a
man. But that time had long since passed and could never come again, no matter
what foolish notions she’d started to entertain concerning the Earl. The small
seedling of hope that had begun to take root in her heart over the past
twenty-four hours had withered and died an abrupt death the moment the Earl had
disappeared into the light.

“He can’t be dead,” Lady Christiana cried. “He just can’t!”

But he was. Wasn’t he? He’d been
dead
for nearly a decade already.

“I was so awful to him this past week,” Lady Christiana continued. “But I
loved him so much.”

Hex nearly choked on the hysterical laugh sticking like glue in her
throat as an irrational and completely inappropriate stab of jealousy tore
through her heart. She knew Lady Christiana was for all intents and purposes the
Earl’s sister. Helen had attempted to explain how the two were actually related
to her last night, but Hex had not paid close attention. She had still been
reeling over the revelation of
what
the Earl was. A decade ago, all
they’d known was that he was different –
more
than human.

She knew she had no call, no
right
, to be jealous. The Earl had
been a stranger to her – or at least
she’d
been a stranger to
him
.

“I never had a chance to say goodbye,” Lady Christiana sobbed.

The woman spoke all the words buried deep in Hex’s own heart. I
never
had a chance to say hello
, she thought with bitter sorrow. But she kept
silent. She knew she would sound like a lunatic if she opened her mouth. No one
would understand.
She
didn’t understand.

A loud, florid string of impressively creative expletives echoed through
the room, followed by the shrill clang of metal hitting metal, diverting her
attention. Hex turned to see the tall, bare-chested stranger slamming his sword
against the strange black box repeatedly, his face contorted with rage. In all
of the pandemonium, she’d nearly forgotten about him. Though she wondered how.
He was not very forgettable, with his black scowl and bare feet and glittering
dragon tattoo covering half of his formidable body. She would have accused the
man of being insane – which he undoubtedly was – had she not
witnessed with her own eyes how the man had entered the chamber in the first
place.

The man had definitely
not
come in through the front door.

It made her wonder if she was indeed the one who’d gone insane. Perhaps
all that had happened in this subterranean chamber was a hallucination on her
part. She certainly wanted it to be.

She glanced down at the top of Hector’s head. He was quite content
– for once – to remain in her embrace. No, she
wanted
this
to be real, as much as it pained her. She had Hector safe in her arms, and
nothing
could make her regret that.

She had a feeling Ro – the Earl – whoever that man had been,
would understand, had he known the truth.

At last, as if thoroughly disgusted with himself, the tattooed man tossed
his wicked-looking sword away, stalked towards the device, and kicked the base
of it so hard with his bare foot it dented the metal and sent the entire
gargantuan thing skidding a few feet across the floor. He hopped away, holding
his injured foot, muttering out a fresh jumble of curses.

Yes, the man was
definitely
unhinged.

“What the hell just happened, Brightlingsea?” Professor Romanov demanded,
the first among them to recover enough to start demanding answers.

Hex reeled anew as the tattooed man’s identity hit her.

The Duke of Brightlingsea. She’d learned about him in her history classes
as a young girl back in Baltimore. The man who’d broken the world half a
century ago to end Ehrengard’s mad war. She’d not truly believed it last night
when Helen had told her he also happened to be the leader of the Elders. Well,
she
had
, just as she’d believed it when she was told the true identity
of the demon who’d been tormenting her family since Cairo. But it was quite
another thing to see the Duke in the flesh with her own eyes.

Literally
in the flesh. The fact that he was dressed only in a
pair of fire-singed trousers probably should have alarmed her more than it did.
Under the circumstances, however, his lack of proper clothing seemed
inconsequential. She was standing in a room littered with
vampire
corpses – many of whom she’d beheaded herself – Stieg Ehrengard had
just managed to escape justice
again
, and the man who may or may not
have been the love of her life had just been swallowed up by a damned ball of
light.

She glanced next to her. Mr. Percy, who looked half-dead from his
battle-wounds, met her glance, looking as overwhelmed and confused as she felt.
The man just shrugged helplessly and turned his attention back to
Brightlingsea, as if enthralled.

The Duke ignored Romanov’s demands and fell to his hands and knees. At
first Hex thought the man was too overcome by grief to remain standing, but there
seemed to be method to Brightlingsea’s madness. He crawled underneath the
device, muttering to himself as he began to pull the thing apart piece by
piece.

“Answer me!” Romanov bellowed, crouching down, trying to grab the man’s
attention. “What happened to Rowan? What is this thing? And how the bloody
hell
did you get here?”

The Duke yanked one of the heavy cables from a small golden ball and rose
to his feet, scowling at the Professor. He scanned the rest of them, his gaze
lingering on Hex the longest. She gasped as something like pity flashed over
his hawkish features. How could he possibly know? Before she could recover
enough to find her voice, however, he stalked back towards the black box,
tugging the cable with him, dismissing her from his notice.

He pressed a lever down with one of his powerful hands, and the top of
the box lifted on mechanized hinges with a hiss, steam rising up from the
inside. He gestured at the contents, and the Professor joined him, glancing
guardedly into the open box. Whatever he saw made him curse under his breath
and unconsciously rub at his chest, looking slightly ill.

Hex picked up Hector despite his protest and followed the Inspector and
Lady Christiana over to the black box. She looked inside with them, wondering
what could possibly unsettle an immortal like Romanov. She half expected
something gruesome to jump out at her – though she didn’t think anything
could be more gruesome than watching Romanov and the Earl literally pull apart
O’Connor’s men, then having to finish off many of them herself after realizing they
just wouldn’t die even after losing whole arms and legs.

The contents of the box were remarkably anti-climactic in comparison
– at least at first. She wasn’t exactly sure
what
she was supposed
to be looking at, but there were four of them, sculpted of a strange, burnished
metal that she couldn’t identify. They thumped with life, expanding and
contracting their bulbous shapes as if they were actual living organisms rather
than parts in a machine. A series of thick, copper-toned tubes connected them
to each other, then linked them into what appeared to be a steam engine. It
seemed surprisingly similar to the one that powered her dirigible back home,
only smaller in scale and far more sophisticated in its design.

A glorified steam engine
? she thought bitterly.
Surely
the
Earl hadn’t lost his life to a damned steam engine.

“I am assuming these belonged to the four Elders who defected to
Ehrengard’s side,” Brightlingsea said grimly. “It seems they learned to their
detriment how Ehrengard rewards his allies.”

“Good God,” the Professor murmured, looking near to casting up his
accounts.

It took a while, but Hex’s mind finally grasped what those strange,
thumping things were inside the box, and why the Professor looked so ill. They
were Da Vinci hearts. And Ehrengard must have murdered four Elders to harvest
them.

“The power in one Da Vinci heart is incalculable, but four together…” The
Duke shook his head, as if too overcome to continue. “I have been working on an
engine capable of generating power like this, but I wasn’t even close to this magnitude.
It’s worse that I could have ever imagined.”

“Yes, Rowan was just killed by that thing!” Lady Christiana shrieked,
trembling in the Inspector’s arms as she glared at Brightlingsea, looking as if
she might attack the man.

Brightlingsea gave Lady Christiana a long, knowing look, and she gasped,
her body stiffening. “My God!” she breathed. “You knew this was going to
happen. All of this. Somehow, you
knew
. Like you knew about Elijah the
other day.”

Wait,
what
?

Brightlingsea sighed and ran a hand over his face wearily. “Yes, I knew.
Not all of it, but most of it. I knew what would happen to Rowan. And I
couldn’t
stop it
. I tried – that’s why I’m here – but I see now it had
to happen just as it did. If he didn’t pass through the portal, and his heart
hadn’t neutralized this engine, the device would have never stopped. It would
have grown stronger and stronger until it consumed this city – the world,
perhaps. Leo didn’t bother with an off switch on this bloody thing, damn his
eyes.”

Hex didn’t have a clue about half of what Brightlingsea was talking
about, or who the hell Leo was, but she could feel that small tendril of hope
beginning to unfurl in her chest once more.

“You called that light a portal. And you stepped through one to get here,
didn’t you?” she asked the Duke in an unsteady voice.

Brightlingsea cocked an eyebrow at her, and his scary amber eyes were
almost approving. “
You’re
quick. I have perfected a device that allows
me to travel forward through time and space at an accelerated speed. I
journeyed here from Wales through the portal that you saw.”

What the bloody hell
? Who
was
this man? But the tendril of
hope grew even stronger inside of her breast. What he said was absolute rubbish…
but why did it make so much sense to her? Why did it explain so much? It
couldn’t be possible…

But then again, what had happened to her ten years ago hadn’t been
possible
either. She’d never had an explanation for what
he’d
been, or where he’d
come from.

“Can you not wear clothing in the portal?” the Professor asked wryly,
though his voice shook on the last word, as if he too couldn’t quite wrap his
mind around the Duke’s words.

Brightlingsea looked down at his bare chest as if noticing it for the
first time. “Rowan’s summons came while I was … napping. I hadn’t time to waste
with my damned toilette,” he growled, his face heating. “But this device does
not do the same thing, I’m afraid,” he said, gesturing towards the giant metal
wheels above them.

“Then what does it do?” she demanded, breathless with the hope and dread warring
in her heart.

“This was a prototype that would allow one to travel backwards in time,
rather than forwards,” Brightlingsea said. He frowned. “It was not supposed to
work even at this crude level, but I had not expected Ehrengard to have the …
resources
he does.”

“So what you’re saying is you’ve built a time machine,” Romanov stated
flatly.

Brightlingsea just shrugged, as if he’d not done anything extraordinary.
As if he’d not just thrown the laws of the universe right out of the window.

“But why?” Romanov cried.

It was a very good question, and one Hex would have asked, had she not
been struck dumb with shock – and her ever-burgeoning hope.

“
Why
would you want to invent something so dangerous? Have you not
learned your lesson, after what happened at Sevastopol?” Romanov continued.

The Duke’s expression hardened. “It is precisely because of what happened
then that I have spent the last four decades working on this.”

Romanov’s eyes practically jumped out of his head. “My God. You mean to
travel back in time to … what? Fix what you’ve broken? You’re absolutely
cracked in the head!”

Clearly. But Hex could hardly care, if what the Duke was saying was true.