by Bec McMaster
“There’s no one else for you,” he demanded. Bit the soft skin of her throat. “Say it.”
The sharpness of his teeth shot all the way through her, igniting something deep inside. Perry squirmed, but this time it wasn’t to get away.
“Say it,” he breathed, fingers curling through hers as her wrists lowered, locking their palms together.
Perry closed her eyes. Squeezed them hard against the emotion surging within. “There’s no one else for me.” There never would be. Never had been, from the moment she’d met him.
Thick silence settled between them, broken only by the harshness of their mingled breaths. Perry glanced at him. A fierce, furious exultation curled his mouth into a victorious smile.
It wasn’t done. Not yet. “I can’t stay. This doesn’t mean anything.”
Garrett’s head jerked back and he searched her gaze. “No, it means everything.” He let her slide down his body, wild and trembling, trying to still her own harsh desires.
“Let me say good-bye,” she whispered.
“I won’t let you go,” he told her stubbornly. “I need you.”
“You’ve never needed me—”
“I need you now.”
The train began to slow, rocking from side to side. Perry glanced at the window. “We’re coming into the next station. You should swap trains here.”
Their bodies rocked together, a gentle, torturous sway. Garrett glared at her, still pressing her against the wall. The train’s brakes squealed and an enormous hiss of steam erupted from the smokestack. The train shuddered to a halt at the station, people’s voices ringing down the corridor. And still he pressed against her.
“Garrett—”
“I’m not leaving without you,” he said stubbornly.
“You don’t have a choice.” She made her voice harden.
“Perry, damn it. I can’t—” He looked away, jaw clenching. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can—”
“My CV levels are at sixty-eight percent. And rising.”
The words stole her breath. Of everything he could have said to her, she’d never have expected this.
“No.” That was dangerously high. Almost double what they had been before Lord Falcone had tried to kill him. Worthy of reporting to the authorities. The heat washed out of her.
“Yes.”
No. She didn’t want to believe it. Shook her head.
“Fitz examined me after the attack. I should have died. Falcone had his hand around my bloody heart, I could feel it. Fitz thinks that my body wasn’t strong enough to fight off both the craving virus and the damage that had been done to me, so it chose the greater threat. The craving virus healed me, but managed to colonize me at the same time.” He looked at her bleakly. “Fitz knows, but I haven’t alerted Gibson to how high my CV levels are. He’d have to report me to the authorities as a risk.”
All of the defiance drained out of her. She knew exactly where that route would end. Twice she’d helped to bring back a blue blood lord who’d fled the authorities when he entered the Fade.
“You’re the only one holding me together right now. I can’t lose you. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.” He looked at her, and a part of her cringed at the bleakness in his eyes. “You don’t know how hard it’s been this last month.” Garrett cupped her face between his hands. The pressure of the wall against her back rocked her slowly. She was trapped here, beneath that imploring gaze. “Damn you, please,” he whispered, one thumb stroking her cheek; an almost desperate move. “Tell me what you’re running from. I can help you. And I need you. I need you so much right now. You’re the only one I trust—”
“The others wouldn’t betray you.”
“The only reason I haven’t lost control is because you’re there. At first I was afraid I’d hurt you, but in some irrational way, being with you makes it easier. Makes me feel as though I can breathe through it, keep control.”
She understood only too well what panic felt like.
“You’re my anchor, Perry. You’re my breath when I feel like I can’t catch my own. I don’t think I can be strong enough to fight this alone.” Blackness swept through his irises, stealing away the blue. Garrett clenched his eyes shut, sucking in a sharp breath. “I can’t do this without you,” he told her hoarsely. “I know I can’t.”
“That’s not true.”
But how could she leave him alone right now? This was the greatest fear a blue blood had. To face the start of the Fade, knowing that it would end in either execution or worse.
She’d have walked away to save his life. But how could she leave him behind when he was dying already?
“Don’t,” she murmured. “Don’t you give up.”
Garrett looked at her and she slid her arms around his neck and pressed his face against her shoulder as if to hide that hopelessness from both of them. The racing tick of his heart thundered through his chest, pressed so tightly against hers. Solid and real. Slowly his arms slid around her, as if he wasn’t certain of her response. Or as if he didn’t want to trap her, wanted to give her the choice in this.
Not that there was any choice. Not anymore. Perry slid her gloved hands through his hair, fingers fisting in the dark coppery strands a little too tightly, unable to stop herself from pressing her cheek against his temple to feel his skin against hers.
“Are you staying?” he whispered, the breath of his words stirring against her neck. “You’re not leaving me, are you?”
One last hesitation. An image of the Moncrieff flashed through her mind, sending her heart thundering along like the train beneath them. “I’m not leaving.”
His arms tightened, crushing her against his broad chest.
This is a mistake, something dark in her warned.
But Perry didn’t care. All she could feel in that moment was Garrett’s hard body pressed against hers. For once she could take guilty pleasure in letting herself melt against him.
***
They swapped trains at the next station. This time the trip was silent, the compartment slowly rocking as she stared out the window and watched London growing larger, the train bringing her closer to home. To her fate.
A full yard separated them on the seat. She couldn’t remember a time when Garrett had ever been this silent for so long. He was a man who liked the sound of his own voice, often stirring her out of the long silences she preferred. Teasing her. Tempting her into arguments that went nowhere just to amuse himself, arguments that left her hot and bothered and burning with life.
“Where were you going?” he finally asked.
“The colonies.” It was the only place she could have safely vanished among the populace. Most of Europe was staunchly anti-blue blood except Russia, and that was far too close to Moncrieff for her liking. In the colonies, blue bloods mingled with humans, with little difference between the classes.
He stared at the empty seats opposite them, as if afraid to look at her. “Are you ever going to tell me why?”
This time it was her turn to look away, out through the window. But she could feel his eyes on her, both of them stealing little glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking. Her gaze softened, focusing on his reflected image, rather than the dreary, gray city climes outside. Their eyes met in the reflection.
“I thought not. Devil take you.” A soft sigh. “I suppose I must figure it out myself.”
That made her head jerk up. Garrett could be astoundingly astute—while also incredibly blind—at times. If he started sniffing around her secrets, trying to unearth them…who knew how far he’d get?
“Don’t! I want your word that you won’t try such a thing, or I swear I shall get on the next train out of London, no matter what I promised you.”
Those perceptive eyes searched hers with a thoroughness that felt as though he looked all the way through her. His brows drew together slowly. Thinking. Always when he was at his most dangerous. “I’d find you,” he warne
d.
“How did you find me?”
“Not your boots,” he replied, his voice sounding tight and dry as he looked out the window. “Do you remember that case with Lord Rommell several years ago?”
A shiver worked over her skin. It was the closest she’d come to dying since Moncrieff.
“I couldn’t find you in the tunnels beneath the theater,” he said, his voice still strangely quiet. “And it stank so bad that I couldn’t track the scent of your clothes either.” He swallowed. “Thought you were dead.”
Almost… Beaten within an inch of her life, lying in the water of the sewers, thinking how easy it would be to just slip underneath them forever. To let the pain and the hurt wash out of her. Even a blue blood could drown.
“You found me,” Perry replied, studying the tension that was growing in his tall frame. Strong emotion wasn’t a good thing for a man in his position to feel. He had to keep calm. Slowly she reached across the seat and slipped her hand into his. “I knew you’d find me.”
“But I nearly didn’t,” he snapped. “I don’t even know what led me down that tunnel. Maybe a noise…maybe some instinct. And there you were, all bloody and bruised. Facedown in that fucking water. Christ.” He scraped a hand over the back of his neck, cheeks reddening. “I asked Fitz to make something so that I’d never lose you again. And then I attached it to the one thing you never go anywhere without.”
Her knife. She felt the hilt of it dig into her breastbone, where it nestled neatly in the sheath built into her corset. Perry’s fingers grazed the smooth velvet over her breasts and he nodded.
All these years he’d been watching over her. Knowing where she was at all times, what she was doing. It should have felt intrusive, but her heart gave a little twist in her chest. He’d cared. Even when she’d thought her own feelings unrequited.
Perry squeezed his fingers. “Take a deep breath.”
It took long minutes before his breathing returned to normalcy. His fingers tightened on hers once or twice but Perry didn’t draw attention to it. He needed her to be his anchor.
She just wondered whether she’d be strong enough to hold on to both of them when the storm finally hit.
***
The train rattled into London’s Kings Cross station slowly, steam hissing like a kettle as the brakes squealed. Garrett looked down at the warm weight against his shoulder, reaching up to trace a dangling black curl off Perry’s cheek.
She’d fallen asleep roughly an hour ago. The train’s rocking motion had tipped her toward him, and Garrett had eased his arm around her, her head against his chest and the feathers from her bonnet tickling his nose.
He didn’t want to wake her. It was…pleasant to sit here. Comforting even. For the first time in weeks, the hunger lay dormant within him. Garrett didn’t particularly want to examine why. The hunger was part of him, his darker half, and it had driven him halfway to Bedlam when he’d realized that she was gone.
As if it knew something he didn’t.
He wanted to taste her blood. The very thought sent need surging through his veins, but the idea of hurting her… It made the dark, furious side of the hunger snarl angrily inside him.
Even the darker side of his craving knew Perry was to be protected at all costs. There’d been blue bloods before—Lynch included—who had fixated on a particular woman to a possessive degree. Last month, when Lynch had been driven into a blood-crazed fury by a chemical agent, he’d still been unable to hurt Rosalind.
The train rolled to a halt and Perry murmured something in her sleep as she turned her face into his chest and curled her fingers around one of the brass buttons on his leather coat.
“Perry,” Garrett whispered, stroking the fine downy hairs at the back of her neck. Her own hair, not the glossy black curls of the wig she wore. It was fine, almost golden at the roots. He’d always thought she dyed her hair black to draw less attention to herself and make her look more like a lad than a woman, but now he wasn’t so sure.
He wasn’t certain of anything anymore, least of all her.
Perry’s eyelashes fluttered against her pale cheeks. He wanted to wake up next to her, like this. Wake up with her in his arms.
She was fiercely beautiful in her own way, from those stubborn gray eyes to the slightly aquiline tilt of her nose and her thick dark brows. The more he looked at her face, the more he seemed to see it. As though he was still struggling awake from that first moment when he’d seen her in a dress, when the world upended itself around him as if someone had splashed ice water in his face.
“I see you,” he whispered.
Perry’s lashes quivered again, her eyes half opening. He watched the moment her gaze focused and she realized she was in his arms. Stillness slid through her, turning her to stone, then she pushed herself upright, the creases from his coat imprinting one smooth cheek.
“You should have woken me.” She stretched, the dark red velvet tightening over her breasts.
Somehow she slid into a dress and it was as if she relaxed into the femininity she so disdained as a Nighthawk. As natural to her as the leathers she wore.
Which led him to a conclusion. Once upon a time, Perry had lived in dresses. It came too easily to her. Indeed, that night at the opera, she’d mingled with the Echelon as if she belonged.
“It didn’t bother me,” he replied. “And you were tired.”
“I spent most of the night laying a false trail all over the city. I might have saved myself the time, if I’d known you had a tracking device on me, and come straight to the train station. You’d never have caught me.”
Though she laughed gently, the words tore through him like a knife. He had to find out what had frightened her, or she could run again. And this time she’d make certain he didn’t find her.
She’d warned him that if he started digging around in her secrets she’d leave. And from the relaxed way she peered out the window, it seemed she’d forgotten that he hadn’t actually agreed not to do so.
Garrett had been very careful not to promise anything. Though he might have distracted Perry from the question, he hadn’t forgotten it. Something had frightened her badly enough that she’d wanted to leave her entire life—and him—behind without even a good-bye.
If she thought he was just going to forget about it, then she didn’t know him very well. But it seemed she was quite content to pretend nothing had happened, which was her usual modus operandi.
So be it. Until he could discover what she was hiding.
And he would find out.
Sixteen
Garrett rubbed his knuckles as the hansom steam coach pulled up outside the guild. As soon as he’d made that quiet acceptance this morning—that there was nothing he could do about the craving virus—his mind had become very clear.
He wanted, more than anything, to drag Perry off to his rooms and finish what they’d started last night and on the train. But her shoulders were still hunched, her gaze distant. She’d agreed to return with him, but he couldn’t push her or he had the horrible suspicion she’d flee again.
“Here,” he said, helping her down from the coach. Nervousness lit through him, hesitancy he’d never known when speaking to her before. But then a part of him was terrified to say the wrong thing, in case she fled. “Are you up to working with me today, or do you wish to rest?”
“I thought I was on desk duty.”
“You are.” Where he could keep an eye on her.
“Garrett…?”
“Yes?”
“I need to speak to you about something. It’s…about the case.”
Finally. He let out a relieved breath. “Of course. As soon as we’ve freshened up.”
They parted ways in the foyer, with Byrnes strolling to the railing of the stairs and glancing down. He looked at Perry. Then looked again, his eyes widening slightly as she sailed past.
Just the man he needed. The thought irritated him, but Garrett couldn’t put this off any longer. He’d let his own selfishn
ess potentially affect the guild. “A word,” he called.
Byrnes straightened. “You found her, then.”
“Your deductive skills are legendary,” Garrett drawled, climbing the stairs. “Don’t ask her about it.”
Byrnes arched a brow.
“Has Miss McLaren said anything yet?” Garrett asked, striding toward his rooms. Opening the door into the study felt a little like coming home. He’d never truly had a place of his own, only the small cell that most Nighthawks were allocated upon arrival.
“Enough.” Byrnes’s face closed as he slumped into a chair by the fireplace. “She’s the daughter of an investment banker in Edinburgh. She can’t recall very much, but she was returning home from a dinner when her carriage was stopped. Miss McLaren peered out the window to see what was happening, and someone hit her over the head and kidnapped her.”
“Imagine being trapped in a bloody tank for months.” Garrett paced in front of the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him. Someone—Doyle, no doubt—had stoked it.
“That’s not all.” Darkness swirled in Byrnes’s eyes. “He performed regular experiments on her. She didn’t go into detail, but I gather they were fairly horrific. But she was very specific on one thing—whoever the killer was, he didn’t want her to die. One of the girls did once, when he had her on the examination table, and he tore the place apart in a fury. The next time he took Ava from the tank for her examination, he was more careful with her, and ever since.”
Keeping his specimen alive. Garrett’s lip curled. “Anything identifiable about him?”
“Tall, broad through the shoulders. He never spoke to her, but he would swear under his breath sometimes. Something foreign, she thought, though it wasn’t German or French. Wore a pair of magnifying goggles and a mask over his lower face, like one of those breathing masks Rosalind gave us at the opera to filter the air so we wouldn’t be stricken by the gas from the Doeppler Orbs.”
Blast it. Could it be Sykes under the mask? There was no way of knowing for certain. “So maybe he didn’t mean to kill Miss Fortescue or Keller? Maybe Miss Fortescue was a failed experiment and Mallory startled him in the midst of moving Miss Keller downstairs.”