Layers to Peel

by Tilly Wallace

  Her gaze locked onto him and he read the determination to hang on. He changed back to human and laid himself flat along the floor, ignoring the splinters and sparks that dug into his naked body. He stretched as far as he could and grabbed her flailing hand. He gritted his teeth and directed a partial shift to his feet, letting claws dig into the softening timbers for purchase and to anchor himself. Then he grabbed her other hand and, inch by inch, hauled her up.

  Once her chest cleared the floor, she wriggled and squirmed to lever the rest of her body up next to Alick.

  "I have you, Izzy-Cat," he said.

  With a relieved sob, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. "Wonderful. At least we can burn to death together."

  "No, we won't." Although it was looking bleak. Already it was a moonless night in the warehouse. Thick black smoke swirled all around them, punctuated only by arcs of flame as the fire reached for something else to consume. Bright sparks flared above them and then drifted down.

  They couldn't go down—already heat from below scorched the underside of the remaining upper floor and soon it would eat through the timbers and drop them to their deaths. They couldn't go up, since there was nothing to climb and neither of them could fly like Forge.

  That only left sideways.

  The end of the warehouse had an opening where a beam with a pulley jutted out. A rope could be lowered to a ship below and cargo nets lifted directly from the hold up to the top storage area. As the fire ate the supporting timbers, the roof had partially collapsed and dropped the beam. It now teetered on the remains of the floor and the other end ran out over the harbour below. Luckily there was no ship below today, just frigid autumn water.

  It wasn't the best plan in the world, but it might just work.

  He brushed a kiss against her sooty cheek. "You know how I always say I will never let you fall?"

  She raised a tear-filled gaze. "Yes."

  "This doesn't count."

  She frowned but before she could ask her question, he stood up and lifted her into his arms.

  "Hold on," he said. Then he focused his gaze on the rapidly disappearing opening and ran. He trusted to his wolf senses as he ran along the narrow walkway with Isabel in his arms. The beam shifted and moved under his feet. He hunched over to protect her from the flaming debris that scorched his back. After this he would never have hairy shoulders again. As he reached the gaping access-way, he kept running out over the beam. As he approached the end, he let his wolf take over and jumped, pushing off as hard as his legs could muster. At the same time, he curled himself around Isabel.

  The wolf plunged through the air and toward the water. He rolled, keeping Isabel tucked by his belly, and his back landed on the hard water first, knocking the air from his lungs. They dropped through the cold water, both of them sinking quickly. Then with a kick he propelled them both back toward the murky surface.

  Isabel moved to his back, her arms around his neck. With his mate safe behind him, Alick paddled toward the shore, away from the blazing warehouse.

  30

  Isabel

  * * *

  It was a scorched and sodden Isabel and Alick who climbed out of the harbour and onto the steady wharf. Isabel couldn't decide if she was overheated from being trapped in the fire, or freezing from the cold water. Whatever temperature her body settled on, her teeth chattered and rattled together as she shook. It felt as though they had battled for hours through an endless night, but outside it was still late afternoon with pale sunshine.

  Men clutching buckets ran past them, not even glancing at the naked Highlander as they were intent on stopping the fire before it consumed the neighbouring warehouses. If the building had a fire mark, a brightly coloured plaque to denote the owners had fire insurance, then an attempt would be made to douse the blaze. Otherwise the warehouse would be left to burn and efforts would concentrate on stopping the spread of fire.

  Fortunately Browning and Sons was on the end of the row with a good gap between it and its closest neighbour. Men formed a bucket brigade and threw water at the flames to stop them from reaching undamaged timbers. A heavy water-engine had been hauled along the wharf to assist efforts. Other men operated the pump while one stood and aimed his hose at the nearest flames. More men bucketed water from the harbour to keep the lead-lined trough full.

  Isabel leaned into Alick, who seemed unnaturally hot despite being both naked and recently immersed in the same frigid river as her. He dropped a kiss on her head and wrapped his arms around her.

  Hamish and Ewan pushed through the growing crowd and approached them. Hamish tossed a blanket to Alick and he wrapped it around his middle as an impromptu kilt.

  "Are you unhurt, Isabel?" the captain asked.

  "I will survive to fight another day," she said and managed a weak smile. "But my throat is both parched and sore."

  She touched the two small wounds on her neck. They burned still, as though embers had worked their way inside her flesh. Alick growled from beside her.

  "Damn vampyre can't burn hot enough or long enough to pay for attacking you." His arm tightened around her waist.

  "Will I become one, too?" That was the question that preyed on her mind. Did one turn into an Unnatural when bitten by one?

  "There is more to the process than a single bite," Hamish murmured. He leaned closer and peered at her neck. "The wound has stopped bleeding but once we return to Kensington, Aster will know if there is anything we need to do beyond cleaning and dressing the punctures."

  Once assured she was safe, Hamish and Ewan returned to the burning building, to help others and search for any sign of Forge. Within two hours the blaze had exhausted itself and men with buckets doused the last few fires.

  The luxury goods of Browning and Sons were no more than smouldering piles of rubble. Men pulled out what they could but little remained once the gunpowder had exploded. Only the tightly rolled rugs seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed, and they were piled up next to Isabel. Their outer fibres were singed but the insides still appeared untouched. They looked like enormous cigars with the puffs of smoke rising above them.

  When Isabel started to shiver, Alick called an end to the day and insisted they return to the house for warm, dry clothes that didn't smell of smoke.

  "Do you think he burned up or escaped?" Isabel asked as she was bundled into a carriage.

  "It will take time to find anyone left in the building. There are a few workers still unaccounted for," Hamish said as the horses pulled them west.

  "I'm so sorry," she said and bit back more tears. "If I hadn't been there you would have captured him."

  Hamish shook his head. "There is nothing to apologise for, Isabel. Forge would have grabbed someone else, either one of us or an innocent worker."

  "But he wanted me, to aid Father's plans. And we still don't know anything of their larger plot." She was useless. She should have stayed in the parlour and sewn a shirt. Alick seemed to go through a fair number of them.

  "Fights rarely go as planned," Ewan observed. "And I'm sure none of us will start a fire while sitting atop a store of gunpowder again."

  "And we blew up whatever might have been hidden in the kegs, so we struck a blow against their plot." Alick grinned.

  Isabel shook her head. How could that man see the positive side in what was surely an abject failure?

  Isabel was subdued at the house while conversation broke out around her. Orders were given to draw a bath for her and servants rushed to start heating water. Aster inspected the vampyre's bite and then produced a vial from her pocket and dabbed a sweet-smelling liquid on the wound.

  "Distilled Angel's Breath to clean the bite, courtesy of Lady Miles," she said.

  "Lady Miles has been rather handy." Isabel tried to place a face to the name of the only woman mage in England, but failed. Obviously they didn't attend the same social functions.

  The bite wounds ached for a moment and then a blessed sense of cool relief washe
d through her flesh.

  "She will be missed when she soon returns to the Peninsula with her husband. But her skills are needed to fight there, not indulging my academic curiosity." Aster returned the vial to her pocket.

  "What of Forge?" Quinn asked, looking from one man to the other.

  "He drank vervain from Izzy-Cat, for which I tore his throat out, but he was still strong enough to smack me in the head with a burning book." Alick rubbed his ear. The side of his face was lightly scorched and the scar stood out as stark white against the red burn.

  "Was it a dictionary by any chance? You're using much bigger words now." Ewan poured drinks from a crystal decanter and handed one to Alick.

  Alick narrowed his eyes but seemed too tired to offer up a retort.

  Isabel stepped up to defend her husband. "Alick has been practising his oral skills with me."

  The oh-so-composed lieutenant nearly choked on his drink. He started coughing and his captain had to slap him on the back. Ewan raised dark eyebrows at Isabel and gave her an approving nod. Alick just chortled to himself.

  An hour later, an exhausted Isabel climbed the stairs to a waiting bath. Alick tended to her, washing her skin clean of soot and ash with a cloth. Only when she was clean, dry, and tucked up in bed did he climb into her dirty water and quickly sluice himself.

  "What of your burns? Shouldn't they be tended by a doctor?" Isabel worried about the numerous scorched patches all over her husband.

  "We heal faster than ordinary men. Give me a day or two and they will be nearly gone." Then he curled his large body around her and kissed her forehead.

  "Sleep," he whispered.

  Isabel had never been one to obey, but she decided to make a rare exception, given the day's circumstances, and she promptly fell asleep.

  The next morning, a subdued Isabel tackled a boiled egg while Aster read from the newspaper.

  "Browning and Sons, luxury importers, has lost an entire warehouse of goods due to a fire. The blaze was believed to have started when a lantern was overturned and accidentally ignited their gunpowder stores." She looked up at the men across the table. "I assume that's a polite way of saying a huge fight broke out."

  "We acted as the situation required," Hamish said, staring at his plate piled high with sausage, eggs, and a horrible mass that Alick identified for the puzzled Isabel as haggis.

  "Three workman are missing and presumed to have perished in the blaze," Aster continued reading.

  "Three?" Isabel repeated. One might have been a shadow man, reclaimed by the dark, and she hoped another was Forge. That left only one innocent victim.

  "It's not your fault if they died. The only one to blame is Forge. He threw the kegs around that broke and coated everything in alcohol," Alick growled.

  "What do you think happened to him? I lost sight of him after the lantern shattered and fire broke out." Isabel laid down her cutlery; her appetite had quite deserted her.

  Isabel wondered if the vampyre was powerful enough to have survived the raging fire after Alick had torn out his throat and she had shot him square in the chest. Had the vervain weakened him to such an extent that he burned up? Or had he dragged himself away to lick his wounds and heal? They wanted to assume he had constructed his own funeral pyre, but the lack of a body troubled them all.

  Hamish shrugged. They were wasting hours trying to figure out where he had gone. "He could have perished entirely, or his body might be trapped under wreckage. We simply don't know until we find a body that matches him."

  "Or the slimy bloodsucker could have escaped." Alick's gaze caught Isabel's.

  She would forever remember the sight of him: his pale gaze flashing like lightning as he roared at God and jumped through the fire to reach her. His entire body had pulsed with some ancient energy as he leapt across the ruptured floor and then grabbed for her hand. Then he had jumped out of the building, saving them both from the fire by plummeting into the freezing harbour. His wolf's body had protected her from the heat, from the impact of hitting the water, and from the cold as she huddled against his furry back.

  "There is little we can do now. We have more immediate concerns." Hamish's attention turned to Isabel as he asked his next question. "What do you want to do, Isabel?"

  She shook off memories of that horrible day and the people who had perished. "What do you mean?"

  Hamish laced his hands together on the table. "The duke is your father. We have Napoleon's correspondence to him, but we lack firm evidence. With the warehouse destroyed, we will never know what may have been hidden in the kegs. Your father could be publicly charged and tried, but who knows what a court may decide."

  She let out a sigh and took hold of Alick's hand. "He is my father. Even though he has wronged me, I cannot hate him. Is there a way to let this be the end of things? I would not wish to see my cousin suffer for my father's faults and we must both live with the paths we have chosen."

  The men around the table exchanged glances.

  Hamish nodded. "Very well. I shall ask the war secretary if it is possible to deal with this matter privately. I suspect the Regent and Parliament will shun the duke. There will be whispers and rumours, but no prosecution without his return letters to Napoleon or some other evidence."

  She smiled. "At least society will not be talking about me, for once."

  Alick reached over and slapped Ewan on the back. "Now, what shall we do with you? Do you need my help to find a woman to shatter that cold heart?"

  The tiniest flicker of sadness ghosted behind Ewan's blue gaze, then disappeared. "While you are a complete oaf, you at least possess a heart to give to Isabel. I discarded mine some years ago. I will not be following the example my fellow wolves have set and finding a mate."

  How tragic, Isabel thought, that a man so handsome and intelligent thought himself incapable of love. She wondered what events of his past had turned him from such a possibility.

  Then the butler appeared with an urgent dispatch and such thoughts dispersed like smoke after a fire.

  "Orders, men," Hamish announced. "We are to return to our regiment immediately, The army has finally agreed that the Highland Wolves are to fight openly against Napoleon and we are to be thrown into the fray."

  Alick's gaze turned serious as he looked at Isabel. "What say you, Mrs. Ferguson? Would you follow a mere sergeant to war?"

  She snorted. "Did you really think I would stay here in England?"

  He threw back his head and laughed, a hearty sound that made her toes curl. "No. But I will draw the line at you charging off after Boney on your own. Do try and let us men do something."

  "I will try," she murmured. That was the best she could offer. While she wouldn't don a uniform and take up arms, there must be something she could do to help. Covertly, perhaps? Ideas were planted in her mind that she would tend to later.

  "You will have Aster for company, for she will be travelling with our regiment," Hamish said.

  Aster's gaze sparkled. "Oh, yes. Apparently I have some skills that Wellington would like to utilise. So I imagine the army will find a way to keep me occupied, and I should quite like to meet Mr. Scoville and compare methodologies. I also need to document anything we discover about the French vampyres to aid our understanding of the Unnaturals."

  Isabel was pleased one friend would travel with her, and she wondered about the other. "What of you, Ianthe? Will you join us abroad?"

  Ianthe shook her head. "No. I love Quinn, but I could not sit by and do nothing while he fights. I shall stay here, for there is much to do. I need to find suitable mares for Galahad and I shall find a home where Alice can feel safe."

  "Who is Alice?" Isabel frowned and looked to Alick.

  It was Ewan who answered. His gaze lighted on Isabel at the mention of that name, but she couldn't fathom the emotion that flitted behind his gaze for the briefest moment. "A friend of Ianthe's who has seen the worst of both men and Unnaturals."

  Alick caressed the back of Isabel's neck with a large han
d. "And you have the best of both men and Unnaturals."

  She beamed up at him, content at last with her lot in life. "A wolf and a warrior at my side as we head into adventure."

  * * *

  THE END

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  About the Author

  Tilly drinks entirely too much coffee, likes to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and wishes she could talk to Jane Austen. Sometimes she imagines a world where the Bennet sisters lived near the Hellmouth. Or that might be a fanciful imagining brought on by too much caffeine.

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  Also by Tilly Wallace

  Highland Wolves

  Secrets to Reveal

  Kisses to Steal

  Layers to Peel

  Souls to Heal