Dark Embrace

by Eve Silver

  She wet her lips, trying to think, to plan, to see a way clear of this disaster.

  Killian’s gaze met hers, and he made a small jerking movement of his head, as though willing her to leave. She understood then that he meant to protect her, even to his own detriment.

  “I must insist that you accompany us to the station, where we can finish this discussion in a more appropriate venue,” said the dark-haired constable as he exchanged a quick look with his companion.

  Sarah clasped her hands before her to stop them trembling. She had heard about the interrogation rooms beneath the offices at Bow Street, heard about fists and cudgels and the manner in which suspects were encouraged to answer questions and admit their guilt. Anyone who lived in this parish had heard the horrible tales. But these were not Bow Street Runners. They were constables of the Metropolitan Force. Would their methods be different? The thought that they might carry out such brutality on Killian, the image of him beaten and bloodied, made her ill.

  One of the constables grabbed Killian’s arm.

  Behind her, the hubbub in the ward grew, closing in on her, a cacophony of sound.

  She took a step back, thinking that she must flee. She turned and saw Mr. Simon’s face and Mr. Franks’, the apprentices’, the patients’. Elinor stood to one side, her expression pinched with worry. Matron stood a few feet away, having come along the corridor and heard the last of the constable’s words. Her lips were pressed in a taut line. She looked angry and disapproving, but when she stepped forward and said, “You err, sirs. I do not believe Mr. Thayne capable of such vile acts,” no one paid her any mind.

  Killian glanced down at the constable’s hand on his arm, then lifted his gaze to Sarah.

  They were going to do this. They were going to drag Killian away and see him charged with murder. Murders. Five murders.

  Before she could ponder ramifications and consequences, Sarah stepped forward and said, “He was with me. I am your witness. He was with me—” her chin came up, and she finished firmly “—all night.”

  Killian swung his gaze to her, pewter and ice, and she read his shock that she spoke in his defense.

  “He was with me,” she said again, louder, firmer. “So he could not have killed anyone because he accompanied me to my lodging and remained there with me from ten o’clock last night until dawn.”

  Gasps and murmurs followed her words, and then silence.

  Censure and condemnation hung in the air like a foul smell.

  Of course, she had known it would be so even before she spoke. In saving Killian Thayne, she had doomed herself. A woman of loose moral character was not a woman to be respected and offered the opportunity of advancement on the wards.

  Once before, the day Mr. Scully died, she had stepped forward in Killian’s defense. That day, he had saved her from herself. But today, she was not so lucky, for so speedily had she forged into battle, there had not been a moment for her protector to stand before her.

  “You assert that Mr. Thayne was with you the entire night?” the constable demanded.

  “I do,” she replied.

  “The entire night?” The second constable stepped between her and Killian, using his physical presence to sever any influence that proximity might have over her answer.

  She held his gaze and waited for uncertainty to creep to the fore on little rat feet. In truth, she could not swear that Killian had sat in the chair every moment of the night, guarding her door while she slept. He had been gone when she awakened, and he could have left at any time after she closed her door and locked it.

  She looked back over her shoulder to the dead man on the bed. This time, the killer had ripped open the victim’s throat. And still, there was not a drop of blood spilled.

  I hear your blood rushing in your veins, Sarah. Killian’s words echoed in her thoughts. How could he possibly hear her blood? How? And why had he said such a thing at all? I am not like other men.

  His own softly spoken admissions were rife with macabre possibilities.

  With a shudder, she looked away from the corpse, her gaze lifting to meet Killian’s over the constable’s shoulder.

  The silence hung heavy, like a thick, cloying fog.

  “Miss Lowell,” Killian said, his attention focused on her, and she knew he meant to say more, to sacrifice himself for her honor, to ensure that her name not be besmirched by her assertion that he had remained at her side the night through.

  “Killian Thayne never left my side during the hours between ten o’clock and dawn,” she said again, her tone steady and sure. She knew it for the truth. He had told her he would guard her and keep her safe, and he had meant it. Whatever beast lurked beneath Killian’s skin, it was not a beast that had done this murder.

  She turned her attention fully on the dark-haired constable and stared him down, though her legs trembled beneath her skirt, and her pulse pounded so heavy and fast it made her temples throb. She must find a way to make these men understand that they were looking for their monster in the wrong place.

  “He is not your killer, regardless of what Mr. Simon believes he saw. In fact, Mr. Simon—” she turned her head toward the man in question and found him watching her with narrow-eyed rage “—I believe you said that you saw the patient alive some time close to midnight, a full two hours after Mr. Thayne left King’s College. With me.”

  She knew what they thought. That she had lain with Killian. That she had allowed him liberties of a base nature.

  She almost laughed. If she was to be painted with that scarlet brush, she wished she had at least done something to deserve it.

  Killian inclined his head, a spare movement, almost as spare as the tiny smile he offered her. He had not expected her defense of him. But he appreciated it. Appreciated her.

  In that instant, she wanted to stride to his side, take his hand between her own and decry the constables’ vile suspicions.

  In that instant, she wished she were guilty of all the lascivious acts they suspected. She wished that she had allowed Killian those liberties, that she deserved the horrified looks the nurses and the matron cast her way.

  The truth was, she might well have allowed them if he had only asked.

  Because...Oh, sweet heaven...her heart twisted and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She was in love with him.

  The magnitude of that realization left her reeling.

  She thought she must have loved him for a very long time. For all the small kindnesses he offered to those less fortunate. For the way he offered each patient his undivided attention. For the way he spoke to her and listened to her and valued her words. For the way he had sat outside her door, his presence lessening her fear.

  She was in love with Killian, despite—and because of—all his secret layers and hidden depths, all the mysteries and shadows that dogged him.

  She was in love with a man they suspected of murder.

  15

  Paris, France, 1670

  * * *

  Killian had been back in Paris only three weeks, and he found the streets and alleys to be both familiar and foreign. When last he visited, some sixty years earlier, he had been able to stroll from the north end of the city to the south at a leisurely pace and still arrive at his destination in under an hour. That Paris was gone, replaced by a city more than double in size. The population had doubled in size as well, a happy circumstance for one such as he.

  The fledgling night was cool and brisk, stars blinking overhead, a thin crescent moon bright against the dark sky. Killian walked along rue Neuve-Saint-Saveur, then down a long, uneven slope through the Courtyard of Miracles, home to all manner of criminals and thieves. He was quite certain he could find what he needed here.

  The houses here were crumbling with age, families living one atop the next in poverty and crime—thieves passing their profession from parent to child. It was a place where he could hunt. He rounded one house, the walls half-fallen, and the hairs at his nape prickled and rose. He stilled, glanced
back, but saw nothing.

  No matter.

  His senses might lie. They might be fooled.

  But his instinct was that of a nocturnal beast, a monster, a killer, and that instinct was ever true.

  Someone followed him. Not human. Someone like him.

  Something primitive inside him recognized another monster, though in all the years he had never encountered one save his maker. He was torn by an instinct that demanded he terminate the interloper and the intellectual excitement of having the opportunity to discuss all manner of things with another like himself.

  He kept his stride even and sure, his posture relaxed. Instinct bid him stop, turn, fight, kill the threat, rip it limb from bloody limb. Logic bid him be cautious, be stealthy. Be smart.

  He picked up his pace only slightly as he rounded a corner, then ducked down a dark alley, turning to follow another and another, glad this part of the city had changed little since his last visit. In the end, he was behind his pursuer, prey no longer.

  He caught a glimpse of a woman walking just ahead.

  She was small and delicate, her blond hair piled atop her head in an intricate style, her gown flawless, diamonds at her throat.

  Her shoulders stiffened. She turned her head to the right, not quite looking over her shoulder, certainly not meeting his gaze, but he knew she was aware of his presence. She knew he was there.

  She faced forward once more and walked, and he followed.

  She passed beneath an archway and he walked the same path seconds later, only to emerge on the far side and find the road empty. She was not there.

  He started to turn, his movement aborted as a blow of unsurpassed power landed between his shoulder blades, throwing him forward against the wall. He pushed off, spun, and found the road empty still.

  For a moment, he was disoriented, trying to make sense of the unexpected attack. He was strong, not in the way of a man, but in the way of a monster that was more than man. His adversary was stronger.

  He spun and she closed her hand around his throat. She stared at him, then let him go and stepped back. He vibrated with the need to lunge at her and tear her throat out, to dismantle her body, to—

  He mastered the urge; it made little sense. Here was a woman who was one of his kind, the first he had met in hundreds of years of roaming. He had questions. Surely she had answers. Yet, beneath his skin, the primitive need to battle one who encroached on his territory screamed through his veins and made his muscles clench.

  “You surprise me,” she said. “Only the very old can manage to stand this close and not bare their teeth and posture and growl. Yet, here you are, watching me, studying me…somehow mastering the need.”

  Killian clenched his jaw against the need to bare his teeth and posture and growl.

  After a long pause, he said, “You are mastering the need, as well.”

  She laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “I have been vampire for over a thousand years. Age makes me wise and cautious—” her lashes swept low “—and able to control myself.” She raised her gaze and met his own. “But you…you are able to do what most your age cannot. You are able to use intellect to master instinct.”

  Barely, but he did not say so. Instead, he said, “Why does instinct urge me to mark my territory, to chase you off or kill you?” Even saying the words out loud made a surge of territorial rage swell. He thought of the knowledge this creature surely possessed and held that thought as a way to control the animal need that clawed at him as surely as the hunger ever had. She had walked the Earth for more than a millennium. There was much she could tell him.

  “We are predators,” she said, moving her hand to encompass their surroundings. “Predators feed on the prey at hand. There is only so much prey available, and we are a territorial lot, guarding our sustenance. Did your maker not teach you?”

  “How could he teach me? Would he not succumb to the urge to kill me?”

  “A maker and his progeny are not subject to the territorial instinct. They can live together, hunt together, be together. It is the only chance for long term companionship for our kind.” She sounded sad as she said the last and Killian wondered if she had made a companion, if her efforts had been successful. His one attempt certainly had not.

  “My maker turned me and walked into the sun,” he said.

  Her eyes widened a fraction. “It surprises me that you survived.”

  “In the beginning, I surprised myself.” He paused. “I have questions.”

  She nodded and reached for the ornate necklace at her throat. With a twist of her wrist, she freed what appeared to be a tiny dagger. She used it to nick her wrist.

  Killian stared at the blood.

  She laughed, low and throaty, then put her wrist to his lips. “Sip lightly, friend. It will quell the urge to kill me for a time.”

  He did as she bid, her blood strange in his mouth. It neither slaked nor stoked his hunger, but the taste was familiar. It tasted like the monster’s blood that had made him.

  She pulled her wrist away.

  “Come,” she said. “We will feed and then we will talk and then we will go our separate ways.”

  16

  The dark-haired constable turned to Mr. Simon and asked, “Is there a place we can have this discussion without an audience?”

  Mr. Simon bade the matron take them to his office whereupon began an interplay that Sarah might have found comedic were her nerves not drawn so taut. Mr. Thayne gestured for the constables to precede him, and they gestured for him to precede them, and then the dark-haired one gestured for the bewhiskered red-haired constable to go first. He demurred and then took a step forward, only to tread on his companion’s foot as he, too, took a step.

  Sarah caught Killian’s eye. He lifted his brows but made no comment.

  Finally, the dark-haired constable followed the matron with Killian behind him. Sarah made to follow, but the red-haired constable stopped her. He drew her off to one side and asked her to repeat again her assertions as to Killian’s whereabouts the previous night. There was a shrewdness in his gaze that made Sarah think that the entire bumbling episode had been performed with the intent of creating in her a false sense of ease.

  She was most definitely not at ease.

  The constable asked her again about Killian’s whereabouts, the question worded in a different manner, a challenge to the veracity of her words. She sighed and answered him, keeping every response to a single word if possible, a handful of words at most. And she did not alter her account, though the constable’s mien went from shrewd to combative to leering. His questions grew increasingly more personal, his tone increasingly more aggressive.

  When it was done and over with more than an hour had passed, and she was left standing alone in the hallway. She took a moment to gather herself and then walked into the ward intent on resuming her duties.

  There, with sneering antipathy, Mr. Simon confronted her before all and dismissed her from her post.

  “You are no longer employed at King’s College,” he said. “You will receive no recommendation from anyone at this hospital. Your conduct is unbecoming and reprehensible. You will leave the premises immediately.”

  She had expected exactly this, yet it still hurt.

  She looked neither right nor left as she walked from the ward into the corridor. She had taken only a handful of steps when someone caught her hand. Elinor stood at her side.

  “If you need me,” she said, “come to the front doors at end of shift. Wait for me outside. Or come in the morning before shift. I don’t have much, but what I have I’m happy to share.”

  Sarah blinked against the tears that pricked her lids. She wrapped her arms around Elinor’s shoulders for a quick hug and dredged up a smile meant to reassure. “I’ll be fine. You’d best get back before they decide to dismiss you as well just for speaking with me.”

  Elinor’s face took on a mutinous expression, but Sarah refused to let her friend say or do anything rash on her account. “Go o
n. I will be fine, I promise.”

  She watched Elinor walk back into the ward then went and gathered her cloak and left the building.

  A thick fog had rolled in, heavy and damp. Caught in the gray blanket of cloying mist that clung to her skin and obscured the way, she could see little of what lay ahead.

  Footsteps sounded from behind her, heavy and quick.

  She turned but could see little more than a tall form in a dark over-garment. Of King’s College, there was no sign; the fog had swallowed it whole. She backed up several steps, then lifted her hem, preparing to flee, but a voice hard and angry called out, “Miss Lowell.”

  She froze. The voice was vaguely familiar. “Miss Lowell,” he said again, as though he knew she was nearby, but could see her no better than she could see him.

  The form stepped forward to reveal a long black coat, black-gloved hands, and a black top hat.

  With a gasp, she fell back another step.

  Her pursuer lifted his head and she gasped again when she recognized one of the apprentices from the hospital, Mr. Watts.

  For an instant, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, fear icing her mind, her limbs.

  Then anger crept in, and with it, the recollection that she was not helpless. She was armed. She was prepared.

  “Why are you following me, Mr. Watts?” she demanded, surreptitiously pulling her cudgel free of her cloak.

  She glared at him, studying his expression, his posture, watching for any clue that he might attack. Something nagged at her. Something not quite right…

  He glared back. “I have words I need to say to you.”

  “Words? You could have spoken to me at the hospital. At any point over these many months, you could have spoken to me. Instead, you chose to follow me, terrorize me, steal into my home in the darkness—”

  “What? No—” All anger drained from his face, replaced by confusion. “I never did that.”

  “Never followed me? Your presence belies that claim.”