A Dark Heart (4 page)

There
was
one way, one way to stop the torment, to have some
semblance of a normal life, but he'd never tell her, and he'd never do it. He'd
only replace one torment with another, far greater one. He really would rather
die.

Percy looked annoyed by his silence. "One day you're going to take
too much, and then I'll be..." She broke off and shook her head.
"Never mind."

He stood up and strode to where he'd pitched his jacket the night before
and jerked it on. "Don't worry. I'll be there when we bring down O’Connor,
you have my word on that," he said.

She looked as if she wanted to say something else, but at the mention of
O’Connor, her expression hardened, and something dangerous passed over her
eyes.

"You bloody better be. We've waited twenty-five years, you and I. I
want O’Connor. I want to punish him for what he did to me. For what he did to
you. I want to watch you rip out his heart," she said in a cold,
conversational tone that would have chilled most people to the bone. But not
him. He understood her perfectly. They exchanged a similar litany of desires
often, as if reinforcing the vow they had sworn to each other when they'd been
reunited by chance over a decade ago.

Of course, the gruesomeness of their plans for their enemy had changed
when
he
had changed and had become capable of
actually
ripping
someone's heart out. He had a feeling Percy reveled in that aspect of his monstrousness.

She was the only one.

"But not before you make that son of a bitch give you
his
name," she added, as she always did.

As if Elijah needed any reminder of
him
. The second man's face
– the one who'd given him his scar and killed Percy's brother – was
forever etched in his memory. He'd find out the man's name for Percy, no matter
what it took to extract it from Nick O’Connor's lips. But he had a feeling he
was not going to like what he discovered.

When Lady Christiana had transformed him, all of his wounds, old and new,
from his ruined eye, to Percy's blade work on his abdomen, down to the very
hangnails on his toes, had healed ... except for the scar on his cheek. Elijah's
memory of that long-ago night was hazy, but he did remember cutting that toff’s
arm open, and the sizzling, streaking pain on his face that had followed. It
had been like acid eating away his flesh to the bone, and he could think of
only thirteen men on earth who had blood like that.

Newgate Nick, child procurer, whoremonger, murderer, thief and current
king of the Black Market, had remained alive and well all these years, even
after being skewered by a poker, for a reason. He wasn't entirely human. O’Connor's
dominion over the stews was maintained by his personal vampire army, men and
women he'd turned in order to terrorize his competitors – and the general
citizenry – into submission. That meant that O’Connor had to be a Bonded,
for only the Bonded had the blood capable of turning someone into a vampire.

And
that
meant the Elder who'd Bonded O’Connor had to have been
the man who'd killed Percy's brother that night, for whatever reason, before
handing Percy over to O’Connor’s tender mercies.

When Elijah had finally put the puzzle pieces together, he knew that
their simple quest for vengeance had become something much bigger.

Percy didn't understand this. Like many who conducted their business on
London’s roughest streets, she knew about vampires and the fact that O’Connor
was somehow turning people into them, but she didn't know about the Elders.
Despite her brilliant knack at espionage, she'd yet to learn about the
existence of the shadowy group of immortals who secretly ruled the world. This
didn't surprise Elijah, who knew to his detriment how closely the Elders
guarded their secrets.

And Elijah was not about to tell Percy the truth, not until he absolutely
had to. God knew what she'd do with such information.

It wasn’t that Elijah felt he owed any loyalty at all to the Elders. He
kept their secrets for Lady Christiana's sake, and no other reason. Hell, he
trusted
Percy
more than he trusted an Elder, which was why he'd
refrained from telling Rowan anything concerning O’Connor or the unknown Elder
he suspected was behind all of the Black Market's rotten business. Rowan was a
good man, but Elijah had no desire to test his true allegiances.

"We'll find him, Percy," was all he could say to her now. He
couldn't tell her the whole truth, but he could tell her a part of it –
the only part that mattered to both of them. "We'll find all of them. My
vow hasn't changed."
Even if it
is
an Elder
, he
added silently.

She nodded, satisfied for the moment.

"So are you going to tell me why you're here?" he prompted,
changing the subject.

"Right. Forgot my news. The Gentleman struck again. Just as you
said."

"Bloody hell," he muttered.

"How did you know he'd visit my new employer's safe?"

"A hunch," he said. Though it hadn't been. He'd been tracking
the most notorious jewel thief to hit London in years for a few months now. He
knew the Gentleman’s patterns as well as he knew the back of his own hand. He'd
just never cared enough to actually try and catch the bastard, no matter how
much of a fuss the nobs in Mayfair kicked up over it down at the Yard. In fact,
he'd gladly let the thief nick all the baubles he wanted from the fat, indolent
Upper Ten Thousand. It had not been Elijah's problem.

Until he worked out that Newgate Nick employed the Gentleman.
Then
it had become his problem. And Percy's. The thief was their best hope in years
of infiltrating O’Connor's stronghold at long last, but they had to catch the
elusive man first. Thus Percival Parminter, valet extraordinaire, had been
born, lending services to the rich aristocrats who were the Gentleman’s potential
targets. It seemed their efforts had finally paid off.

"The thief went straight for Lord Montague's wall safe. Nearly had
it opened before I could even bloody blink. But I did as you told me to. I made
just enough noise to scare him off before the deed was done. He was out of an
attic window in a flash. I followed him the best I could, got halfway to Covent
Garden, then lost him. The little bugger is fast," Percy said, with
grudging admiration. "Faster than I ever was."

"Did he know he was being followed?" he asked, taking his long
cane from Percy's outstretched hand. He'd used a cane to support his crushed
leg before the transformation, so he pretended to use one now – except
this one had a long, deadly sword sheathed inside of its hollow body. Perfect
for killing leeches.

"I don't think so," she answered. "I’m not
that
out
of practice. I have a feeling he'll return to Lord Montague’s, though. He didn’t
like having to abandon his take."

"I’m sure he didn't like having to return to O’Connor empty-handed
full-stop,” he said. “O’Connor is holding something over the thief's head to
get him to steal. He'll come back tonight, or sometime very soon. O’Connor will
make it impossible for him not to. Lord Montague has the best diamonds in the
city, and for some reason O’Connor wants them. I'll go there tonight."

"There's something about this thief," Percy began hesitantly.
"He's not at all like O’Connor’s usual associates."

"It's our best lead we've had in years. Do you mean to give up the
hunt because you feel sorry for this thief?"

Percy glared at him over her spectacles. "Just don't forget to feed,
Drexler. I wouldn't want you to lose control before we even interrogate the lad.”
She extracted a thick calling card from her waistcoat pocket. "Oh, and I
found
this
pushed under your door."

Elijah snatched the card from Percy's hand and groaned at the short,
terse note, and the single name embossed in glossy sepia typeface beneath it.

Llewellyn House. Noon. Brightlingsea
.

He crushed the card in his hand and sent it flying across the room.
Couldn't the man use a bloody wireless tickertext like the rest of the modern
world?

Percy quirked her brow at his show of temper. "Care to tell me why
the Duke of Brightlingsea is sliding calling cards under your door?"

"No," he said tersely.

"Surely it's not
the
Duke of Brightlingsea. The famed Hero of
Sevastopol himself. Didn't he die years ago?" she asked, undeterred,
trailing him towards the door to his flat.

"It's a son or nephew or something," he answered. Though it
wasn't. It was
the
Duke of Brightlingsea. Who also happened to be the
damned leader of the Elders, and the scariest, craziest son of a bitch Elijah
had ever encountered. Whatever had brought the immortal leader back to London
from his Welsh lair couldn't be good.

Elijah just prayed that the Duke hadn't found out that Lady Christiana
had been the one to turn him. Brightlingsea had let Elijah live when they'd
parted ways over half a year ago, after they'd both helped track and kill the
psychopath who'd kidnapped Romanov's wife. The Duke had seen the value in
having Elijah under his thumb, cleaning out the nest of feral vampires –
O’Connor’s cast-offs – infesting London's streets. It meant the Duke
didn't have to lift a finger himself.

Lazy git.

But Brightlingsea had made it more than clear that the Bonded who'd
betrayed the Council's sacred vows and turned Elijah would have to die, so
Elijah had said his maker was already dead. Rowan hadn’t contradicted this. But
that didn't mean Rowan, who'd always been scrupulous to a fault, hadn't decided
to come clean to his cousin and blood brother, despite his bond with Lady
Christiana.

"Well, are you going to tell me what the Duke wants, and why you're
meeting him at Llewellyn House?" Percy demanded.

"No. It's nothing to do with you."

"It never is when you visit your nob friends," she muttered.

"They aren't my
friends
," he growled. What was Percy's
problem this morning?

"Not even her Ladyship?" Percy inquired in a too innocent
voice.

Elijah stopped at the door to his flat, gripping the doorknob so tightly
he could feel the brass warping under his fingers. "What are you implying,
Percy?"

"I'm not
implying
anything. I've just seen the way you look
at each other."

"Have you been spying on me again?" he demanded.

Percy shrugged nonchalantly, though her turbulent silver-gray eyes
betrayed her. Why Percy should be so obsessed with a woman she'd never even met
was beyond his powers of deduction.

He threw open the door to his flat and made the long, steep descent through
the squalid, half-abandoned building in the darkest corner of eastern
Whitechapel. Percy followed behind him, careful not to touch the grimy walls
with her pristine clothes.

They had to step over something dead at the ground level before reaching
the front entrance. Percy wretched in a perfumed handkerchief ... or, rather, Percival
Parminter did. Percy always went into character the moment she stepped out into
the world, even if there was no one around to appreciate the act. Her reasoning
was that one never knew who was watching or listening ... which was probably
one of the reasons why she'd fooled the world for so long. She never let down
her guard.

"Lud, but you live in a pit. No wonder you're so broody," Percy
remarked in her gentleman's lazy drawl once they reached the street, which was
not much of an improvement over the hovel they'd left behind.

Elijah's choice of neighborhood was as sordid as London got. The narrow,
mud-packed, and nameless side street he called home was lined with tall, cheap
wood and brick buildings as timeworn and disreputable as the one Elijah lived
in. A few hollow-eyed pedestrians picked their way around the slops that had
been tossed from chamber pots through paper-covered windows at dawn. Large
fetid puddles of unidentifiable liquids had gathered in deep ruts gouged in the
packed earth from the traffic that had once rolled down this street –
decades ago. It had remained virtually untouched by the Steam Revolution and
modern sanitation. It smelled like a sewer and looked like a sewer.

"Did you just call me broody, Percy?" he growled.

"Don't try and deny it. You should move. You wouldn't feel so broody
in less ... er, rustic accommodations."

He grunted. Why should he move, when he belonged here? He'd been born in
a shite-filled hole just like this one. He fully expected to die in one. And at
least this shite-filled hole was so disgusting even the meanest beggars steered
clear of it if they could help it. The few who peopled the sad, dilapidated
hovels on this street were as near to ghosts as he was.

Here, he had far less of a chance of hurting someone if something went
wrong.

"You are full of advice this morning, Percy,” he muttered.

"Just protecting my investment. Ah, our ride is still here,"
she said, waving her handkerchief towards the top of the street.

The sight of a bulky, metal-worked police steamcart in his pre-1850's
slum of a neighborhood was a jarring sight and attracted attention. Unwanted
attention. A crowd of wide-eyed indigents had started to gather and gawk,
though at a distance. No one wanted to get too close to a police vehicle, or
Constable Matthews, whose massive size, Welding arms, and belligerent stance
could intimidate even a vampire.

So much for keeping a low profile in the neighborhood.

Elijah glared at Percy, who just shrugged. "The Constable was good
enough to give me a lift across town. He is as worried about you as I am,” she
said.

"Why the hell is Matthews so worried?" he grumbled.

"Perhaps because you've been late to work every day for the past two
months.
If
you manage to show up at all."

"Well, I'm not fucking late today," he growled. "It's
barely past daybreak."