Authors: Kerrigan Byrne
“It’s the fifth act, Argent,” said Charles Dorshaw as he oozed from the shadows of the doorway. “Desdemona is in the middle of being murdered.”
“I should have known you were back,” Argent muttered as he sized up the pale assassin with the mischievous eyes and the sharp throwing knife brandished at the ready. “The blood in the streets, the tortured, degraded women.”
The man across from him maintained an expert grip on his knife as he gave a relaxed chuckle. “Some of us
enjoy
our work. We can’t all be cold fish like you.” He licked thin, refined lips. “Though we can savor the bodies … when they’ve gone cold.”
Ladies fanned themselves over Charles Dorshaw’s lean, handsome elegance. They posed seductively and dropped their handkerchiefs for him. They angled for introductions and indelicacies. What they didn’t know was that catching his attentions was worse than drawing the notice of hell.
Demons had a shorter attention span and weaker stomachs, and there was a chance even the denizens of hell liked their women to be warm and alive when they bedded them.
Dorshaw didn’t.
“America and I failed to suit, I’m afraid. It posed no challenge for me.” Much like a cobra, he used his hypnotic eyes, melodic voice, and impeccable manners to disarm his prey. “So much of it is still as good as lawless, and the women are all loud, opinionated, uncultured swine, or worse, religious fanatics. The men all wear pistols on their hips, and business is slow as those industrious upstarts all seem to do their own killing.” Dark hair and soft, thin eyebrows lent an almost androgynous symmetry to Dorshaw’s wicked good looks as he made a dismissive gesture in his starched evening attire. “Indeed, London is my home, Argent, and her streets have always been big enough for the both of us, wouldn’t you agree?”
“As you say.” Argent nodded once. “But this room isn’t, so get the fuck out.”
Dorshaw tsked and motioned with his chin to the child blocked by Argent’s body. “Can’t do that, old boy. The contract on these two has been … renegotiated. You failed to deliver, and it’s back on the open market.”
“Not as of this evening,” Argent informed him. “Blackwell’s pulled it. The LeCours belong to me.”
Dorshaw shook his head. “There must be some dreadful misunderstanding. I didn’t get this contract from Blackwell. In fact, he and I have never particularly got on. You see, this client has employed me before, and I should be very loath to disappoint.” He thumbed the razor edge of the dagger for which Dorshaw had become infamous. “I’ll leave the child alive, if that’s any comfort to you. I merely have to
deliver
him.”
A gasp and a whimper sounded from behind them and Argent did his best to shut it out. If he could reach for his garrote, or his own knife, he could bloody Dorshaw’s throat before he took his next breath. But something about the tiny rattle of whimpers behind him stayed his hand.
“Listen carefully, Dorshaw,” Argent said, nonplussed by the difficulty he had in maintaining his monotone. “I have claimed the woman and the boy. They are under my indefinite protection. You leave now, and you leave them
alone
… and I’ll let you escape with your life.”
Dorshaw threw him a look of regret that had little to no sincerity in it. “I
could
have done, Argent. The money is good, but not the best. I could have let you have her; I could have let her go, if I hadn’t seen her first.” His face turned rapturous, and Argent knew in that moment Dorshaw was going to die.
By his hand.
But that throwing knife in Dorshaw’s hand was poised to fly, and Argent had to take care of it before he made his move. He inched to his right slightly, to be sure his body blocked that of the child.
“It isn’t often men like us get a mark filled with such an overabundance of life as Millie LeCour…” Dorshaw showed even, white teeth in a wolfish grin. “It will take extra time for me to drain her of it.”
“Don’t you fucking say her name.” The red returned, and Dorshaw must have recognized it in his eyes, because his smile died, and with a masterful flick of his wrist, his knife flew right at Argent’s throat and was followed by a deft lunge, charging to take him down if the knife failed to do so.
With reflexes honed to that of a viper’s, Argent reached his right arm across his body and slapped the knife out of the air with his open palm, changing its trajectory to embed into the wall to his left. That put his elbow in the perfect place to solve the problem of Dorshaw’s advancement.
A sharp lunge forward connected his elbow with the man’s eye socket. But his colleague was no stranger to a strike in the face.
Dorshaw absorbed much of the force of the strike by spinning away from it, and coming full circle to face Argent with a larger, sharper knife in the same hand. The flash gave little warning before a burning pain ripped through the meat beneath Argent’s forearm.
Gritting his teeth, Argent cut Dorshaw’s victorious smile short by stomping out at his chest, the force of the blow lifting the smaller man off his feet and throwing him against the door. It was a testament to Edward Middleton Barry’s architectural brilliance that the door remained intact.
In the time it took for Argent to retrieve the knife from the wall, Dorshaw had nearly recovered, and they brandished their blades at each other with absolute absorption.
“We should have done this in the ring, Argent.” Dorshaw sneered. “Imagine the money we would have made, the best slashers in the empire, hand to hand, as it were.”
Argent’s only response was an attack.
With his free hand, Dorshaw seized Argent’s knife arm, his fingers digging into the smarting wound while simultaneously stabbing at Argent’s torso.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Argent plucked the man’s wrist mid-slice, keeping his skin unmarred and his organs right where they preferred to be.
Inside
his body.
Trembling muscles on both sides locked each man in a momentary impasse, but Argent had a few advantages the other assassin did not. The first being an almost inhuman tolerance to pain. Second, superior size and strength. And tertiary, a knowledge of the body’s reflexive tendencies and how to manipulate them.
A slight press on the right point of his wrist, and Dorshaw yelped as his fingers sprang open and the knife clattered to the floor. A shift in weight alerted Argent to the incoming kick aimed between his legs.
None of that; he was planning on using that particular part of his anatomy in a short while.
His foot shot out to block it successfully before kicking at the man’s other knee, buckling it from under him.
Argent followed him to the floor and impeded Dorshaw’s attempt at gaining the upper hand by rolling them both once before pinning the man beneath him, the knife levered toward his adversary’s wide eyes.
“The world is well rid of you,” he murmured as he pressed down with his weight, some of the blood from the wound on his arm dripping onto Dorshaw’s already wounded cheek. The man used both arms in a fruitless struggle to push Argent’s knife arm away.
A muffled sob startled him, and Argent looked into the magnified, tear-reddened rims of wide, blueberry eyes.
“Look away, boy,” he snarled, cringing at a softening—no—a pause in his cold, lethal ferocity.
“No, do watch.” Dorshaw laughed maniacally. “You and me, Argent, we’ll create the next generation.”
Argent punched him in the throat.
“Look. Away.
Now,
” he ordered softly over Dorshaw’s wheezes.
The child nodded, hugging his art supplies closer and squeezing more droplets out of his eyes as he clenched them shut with all his might, using his round cheeks to help.
Satisfied, Argent went in for the kill.
“Stop right there!” The door bounced off the wall.
Argent squeezed his own eyes shut and let a hiss of breath out of his throat, swallowing a surge of intense irritation. If there was one thing worse than a useless, provoking, bothersome, inept, ill-timed policeman, it was a gaggle of them stuffing themselves into the dressing room door, preventing him from carving Dorshaw’s defective brain out of his skull.
Argent stood with Inspector Ewan McTavish of Scotland Yard in silence, both their eyes following Dorshaw’s shackled progress out the door. The smile on the psychopath’s face could only be identified as serene.
“Watch that one,” Argent warned. “He’s escaped us before.”
“We’ll take extra care,” the Scotsman promised. “Not often ye find a murderer at the scene of the crime.”
“A few more minutes and you never would have found him at all,” Argent muttered, then McTavish’s words struck him. “The scene of
what
crime, exactly?”
McTavish turned to him, waiting for the other coppers to clear the room before he spoke in a whisper so as not to let Jakub overhear. “It’s Hassan … we just found him in the alley.”
Something surged through Argent that surprised and alarmed him.
Anger?
“Is Dorshaw one of your contracts, Argent?” McTavish asked.
Argent shook his head. “He’s after the boy and his mother, who’s under my protection.” Surreptitiously, he motioned with his eyes to Jakub, still standing in the corner next to a knocked-over easel, clutching the same art supplies. He looked very small and very lost.
Aware that he was no longer being ignored in the chaos, the boy took a tentative step forward on unsteady legs. “W-where’s Mama? I want her here.” His chin wobbled and his eyes began to leak again, but his voice was clear and sure, if hesitant.
McTavish crouched down to the boy’s eye level, and the child regarded him with anxious uncertainty. He kept glancing over at Argent as if with an expectation gleaming in his eyes, but buggar if he could tell what the child wanted.
“Are ye hurt anywhere?” the Scotsman asked gently.
He shook his head and wiped a runny nose on his sleeve.
Argent made a face.
“What’s yer name, son?”
There was that questioning glance at Argent from beneath long, sandy lashes again. What did the boy want him to say? He knew his own name, didn’t he?
Lifting an eyebrow, Argent looked at the child askance before his gaze needed to dart away.
Somehow, the boy took it as an encouragement. “Jakub.”
“Yer ma’s still on stage, Jakub,” McTavish consoled. “Do ye want me to go wait in the wings, and I’ll bring her to ye as soon as I can?”
The boy nodded so many times Argent lost count.
“All right, lad, I’ll return with her straightaway.” McTavish ruffled the boy’s light locks and seemed to miss Jakub’s flinch as he addressed Argent.
“Looks a bit like ye did as a wee boy. Is he yer git?”
The short and burly officer had been hired barely out of boyhood, himself, to work at Newgate. Due to a sick mother and an absentee father, he’d been more than willing to take bribes from Blackwell, Argent, and their band of criminals back in those days. Though he’d risen through the ranks to inspector at Scotland Yard, his loyalties had never faltered so long as his pockets were full of coin.
He was their man on the inside, and they did favors for each other when they could.
“He’s
not
mine.” The idea was preposterous.
McTavish leaned in, lifting a conspiratorial hand to hide his mouth. “Are ye certain? I’ve likely a few bastards peppering the streets from the randy days of my prime. Ye never can be sure, can ye?”
Argent glanced over at the inspector from beneath a sardonic brow. “I’ve never sired a bastard.” He let his low voice make his unmistakable point. “I promised I never would.”
McTavish hadn’t been there the night his mother had died, but he’d seen the aftermath. He’d been the only one to clean his mother’s blood from Argent’s catatonic body the night after and deliver him into Wu Ping’s protection.
He’d been the one to look the other way as Argent took his bloody revenge.
He didn’t know why, but Argent found the former guard’s presence unsettling even after two decades. To look into the inspector’s soft, understanding Scottish eyes was to glimpse a past best left alone.
“Aye, well, I’ll be after his mother then.” He put on his hat and straightened his coat as though going outside instead of down a hall and into the wings of the theater. Winking down at Jakub, he left.
Silence yawned in a room where chaos had only just reigned. It didn’t belong here in a place of such riotous color and cheerful disarray.
Argent and the child stared at each other warily, and he tried not to think about how the room smelled like Millie. At least the boy’s tears had ceased. Somehow that … improved things.
Exponentially.
“Thank you.” Jakub’s soft, somber voice echoed as loudly as a gun blast between them.
Argent blinked, but was saved from the expectation of a reply as the child uncurled his fingers from the implements he’d been protecting, and bent to retrieve his short easel and set it to rights. He restored the canvas to its place and took an inordinate amount of time centering the piece.
Argent didn’t know what to do with gratitude. He’d never before been faced with it. Should he clarify just exactly what he’d done to deserve it? Which, in essence, was nothing now that he thought about it, because he didn’t save the boy from capture, or his mother from a deadly ambush, out of any altruistic spirit. He’d done it because Millie LeCour was going to pay him for the deed.
With her body.
A foreign sensation coiled in his chest as he watched Jakub’s small hands deftly and compulsively arrange the supplies around the canvas. His tongue tasted wrong and his skin felt—smudged somehow. What unsettled him the most was that the distasteful feeling seemed to be directed at himself.
Millie LeCour stared out of the canvas posed in a dress of emerald green, standing in a disarray of roses. The colors were heavily applied, and the nose completely skewered, but her smile, high cheekbones, and heavy dark hair were unmistakable.
Drawn to the painting, as he was to its subject, Argent took a step forward, then another. “You’re … painting your mother.” He stated the obvious, painfully aware that he could think of very little to say to a child. As he constantly had to remind people, he refused to harm or assassinate them, and therefore very rarely found himself in their company. The only child he came into contact with on any semblance of a regular basis was Faye Marie, Blackwell’s infant girl, and she did little more than squawk, drool, and put things in her mouth that had no business being there.