Nature of the Beast

by Hannah Howell

  “My apologies,” she offered acerbically, not bothering to mask the fact that her words were insincere. “You cannot simply step into my life and tell me what I may and may not do. I do not answer to you, sir.”

  “No, you do not,” he murmured, and shot her an indecipherable look. “I wonder if you have ever answered to anyone.”

  The words wounded, though she thought he had not meant them to, for there was a measure of admiration in his tone. She was not certain how she felt about that.

  “There was a time that I relied on my father’s decisions to guide my life. Then he began to make only bad decisions, and finally, none at all, and so I learned to chart my own course.” She rose and crossed to the bed, where she scooped up both the ribbon and the box. She strode to the door, opened it, and set both out on the landing near the stairs, then closed and locked the door behind her.

  Turning to face him once more, she rested her back against the wooden door and made a noisy, rushed exhalation.

  “Well,” he said, his tone laced with humor, “that was a solution.”

  “The best I could conjure at the moment.”

  “You are ever resourceful.” Again, the whisper of admiration. It made her feel as though he knew her, saw the practical, intelligent part of her and valued that.

  The moment spun out, thin and fragile, her thoughts battling within her. A part of her wanted him to step closer, to gather her in his arms, press his lips to her hair, and a part of her was appalled by those thoughts.

  She sighed in both relief and disappointment when he tossed his cloak on the bed and moved to the far wall with its two tall, narrow windows. He checked the latch on the first, then drew the frayed and moth-eaten velvet curtain across it. With a step to the right, he faced the second window and tested the latch. It slid free and the pane swung open, letting in a swirling blast of frigid air.

  He did not so much as blink as the wind hit him, but Sarah huddled deeper in the folds of her cloak.

  With careful attention, he closed the window and again tested the latch, then played with it a moment until it clicked into place. It was merely temperamental, not broken.

  His gaze sought hers. “I am staying.”

  The temptation to sink into the safety of his presence and simply thank him and let him do as he wished was a succulent lure. But she refused to be beguiled.

  “While I appreciate your kind offer, there is no need for you to remain here. I have spent many nights alone in this place, and I awaken each morning with my heart yet beating and breath in my lungs. Tonight will be no different. I think it best if you go.”

  Eyes the color of a storm-laden sky pinned her and held her in place. “I will sit on that chair, or I will take you to my home and you may spend the night there. The choice is yours.”

  “You cannot spend the night in this room.”

  “As you wish,” he agreed amiably, and grabbed the chair from the corner. He dragged it to the door. “I shall spend the night on the landing outside your door.”

  “There is no need,” she insisted once more, skirting around him to pick up his cloak from her bed. “I shall be perfectly safe here with the windows latched and the door locked.”

  “I beg to differ. There are creatures of the night that even the best locks will not hold at bay.”

  The way he said that, soft and menacing, set a shiver crawling up her spine.

  “You cannot sleep in the hard chair.” She stepped forward and laid her hand next to his on the chair back.

  “I need little sleep.” The smile he turned on her was languid, and it made her pulse trip. “I will stay the night through and leave at the first hint of dawn before the house awakens. No one will know I was here, and you will be safe in the light.”

  She held her place, held his gaze, her heart racing a wild, heady pace. “Safe in the light? I do not understand.”

  “I know. And I am not yet ready to explain.” His smile dropped away, and he took a slow deep breath, his chest expanding, his gaze gliding over her in a lazy caress, lingering on her lips in a way that made her pulse pound hard and fast. “I hear your blood rushing in your veins, Sarah.”

  How could he possibly hear that? And yet it sounded as though he spoke the truth. She made a stunted, nervous laugh, low and breathy.

  His hand shifted on the chair until it covered her own. Warm skin. Firm flesh. She could not think, could not breathe.

  “Is it for me that your heart races?” he whispered, his voice warm and rough.

  For him. Yes.

  He leaned in, his cheek almost touching hers.

  “I have watched you for so long, Sarah. I have longed to touch you, to hold you. I had not planned it, this fascination. But here it is”—his cheek brushed against her hair, and her heart stopped, her breath stopped—“and I find myself glad of it, though reason argues it is unwise.”

  Her senses hummed with her awareness of him, with the warm glow that swelled at his words and the wild ache that spread through her limbs.

  Oh, her mind was not her own, her body so heavy and hot.

  She wanted him to kiss her. Wanted to know the feel and taste of him. She was hungry for him, her lips tingling, her belly lit from inside with a heat that bordered on pain. Even in her inexperience, she recognized the feeling for what it was. Attraction.

  It was lovely, this feeling, lovely and frightening and thrilling. She thought that if only he would press his mouth to hers, she would understand, would know secrets that hovered just beyond her reach.

  He turned to her then, his movement quick, and she fell back a step, her back pressed to the wall.

  Both hands shot out and Killian laid his palms flat on either side of her shoulders. She held herself still, her heart thudding, her gaze locked on his mouth, and he smiled, a dark, dangerous curving of his lips that bared a flash of white teeth for but an instant.

  “You crave my touch.” Not a question. She was glad. She had no breath left to form an answer.

  Taking his weight on his outstretched arms and flattened palms, he leaned in and brushed her lower lip with his, so soft, so gentle. Their bodies touched nowhere but their lips and she was undone by that caress.

  She was so focused on him that the world beyond faded away to nothing.

  His tongue traced the seam of her mouth, and when she gasped in shock, he pushed inside, his tongue inside her, tasting her, touching her.

  She moaned, stunned by the wild kaleidoscope of sensation, endlessly wondrous.

  Winding her arms about his neck, she tunneled her fingers in his hair, enjoying the sensation of the thick, silky strands running through her fingers like rain. She kissed him back, following his lead. Tentatively, she touched her tongue to his, then grew bolder, stroking him and learning the feel of his mouth.

  His weight came down on her, the lush heat of his body making her blood rush and her belly dance with a low, humming ache. She rose on her toes, driven by instinct to mold herself to him, to fit every ridge and edge of him in the soft swells and dips of her body, his thighs hard against her own, his belly and chest taut where hers were soft. She found exquisite pleasure in the feel of him heavy upon her.

  He kissed her jaw, her neck, his mouth lingering on the pulse that beat there, his breathing ragged. Arching back, she offered herself, loving the sensation of his lips at her throat, his teeth grazing the tender skin.

  With a groan, he tensed, then drew back, his eyes gone dark, the pupils dilated.

  Panting, she stared up at him, understanding neither herself in that moment nor the wild, turbulent emotions rolling about inside her like heavy charcoal-limned clouds in a storm.

  He meant to turn away. She sensed that. Meant to block out the wonderful connection that spun out between them like a glittering thread.

  “I feel as though I stand on the edge of a cliff, the wind whipping my cloak behind me, and if I can only find the will and courage to leap, I will fly,” she whispered. “Kiss me again, Killian. Make me fly.”
>
  She felt drunk on the taste of him, the feel of him, unlike anything she had ever experienced.

  The look he turned on her was feral. Hungry. She thought he would plunder her, take her, drag her against him and kiss her in ways she was too untutored to imagine.

  Yearning sluiced through her, fever bright.

  And she thought her heart would break when he stepped away, mastering himself with visible effort, his cool mask sliding in place to obscure the burning heat she knew she had not mistaken.

  “Sarah,” he rasped, his gaze locked on her throat, hot and dark. Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers. “I must not—”

  He shook his head, and she felt lost, barren, already missing the connection that melted away. He brushed his thumb along her cheek and she ached to fling herself against him.

  Rooted in place, she watched as he took a step toward the door, then paused to look back at her over his shoulder, his eyes gone flat and dark, fathomless, mysterious, too many secrets reflected back at her. She was so attuned to him in this impossible moment, she felt the leashed tension inside him.

  There had been a thrilling edge of desperation in that kiss, coupled with swirling emotion. A heady blend. She ached to untether the bonds he set about himself, to follow where that desperation and emotion might lead.

  A perilous path to tread; a most dangerous thing to want.

  Five

  Looking back at her over his shoulder, Killian held her gaze a moment longer, his hands fisted at his sides, his control clearly in place, if somewhat tattered. Sarah recognized that she affected him—deeply—and that pleased her. The realization was disconcerting.

  “Lock the door behind me,” he said, his voice taut. He broke the connection, turning his face toward the door, his thick golden hair sliding across his shoulders, bright against the black cloth of his coat.

  She had no wish to lock the door against him. She had no wish for him to leave at all. Her lips felt warm, swollen from his kiss, and she wanted only to kiss him again, to press her mouth to his.

  “If I lock the door, how will you come to me should I call out?” Such a reasonable question, despite the unreasonable circumstance. She could not imagine calling out to him, could not imagine him sitting out there all night on the small, stiff chair. Why would he do that for her?

  His shoulders tensed, but he did not look at her again. “There is no door that could stop me if I wanted to be at your side, Sarah. Remember that. Remember that I…” He made a slow exhalation, as though he struggled with the words, and after an instant, he continued in a low, ragged tone. “I am not like other men.”

  No, he was not. A part of her recognized that with soul-searing clarity. He was like no one she had ever known. She could sense a hidden part of him, held in careful check just beneath the surface, and she did not doubt that he spoke the truth, that no lock, no door could hold him. It was a strange and frightening comfort.

  He walked toward the door, past the small table with the candle and the plate of food, and he paused there, his attention snared. She thought he meant to insist she eat, and she knew that she could not. Her stomach was alternately in knots and dancing and twisting like a thousand butterflies struggling to get free.

  “What is this?” he asked, lifting the old and yellowed copy of New Monthly magazine that lay open beside the plate. He read aloud the title of the short story she had pored over so many times that she could recite it by heart. “The Vampyre’ by John William Polidori”—he glanced at the date—“April 1, 1819.”

  His voice had grown eerily flat, devoid of inflection.

  “My father was obsessed with that story before his death. He read it again and again, studying and dissecting the words as though they held the secret mysteries of life.” She shook her head. “I have read it myself so many times that I can recite it in its entirety. A sad and horrid tale, but I do not see what agitated my father so greatly. There are no secrets hidden there.”

  “Are there not?” He cast her a veiled look. “May I take this to read while I keep watch?”

  Keep watch. Over her. When was the last time she had felt safe? Months. Perhaps years. But tonight, with Killian guarding her door, she was safe.

  She knew not how to place that fact in the twisted uncertainty that had become her life.

  What was it about him that made her firm in her conviction that she would come to no harm whilst he was near? He was a doctor, a healer. But he was also a formidable man. She shivered. “Yes, please do. Perhaps in your reading you will find the secrets that I missed.”

  “Perhaps. Tell me, in the end, is the vampire revealed for the monster he is?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “A guess. Are vampires not always fiends?” The thread of irony in his tone gave her pause.

  He dipped his head, drummed his fingers in a slow roll across the tabletop, and she had the feeling that he argued a silent debate within himself, as though he meant to say something more. In the end, he only inclined his head and exited her chamber, closing the door behind him with a soft snick.

  She hesitated, then went to the door, pressing her palms against the frame. She could not say how she knew it, but she did; she knew he waited, listening, until she turned the key in the lock.

  Her hand trembled, and she held it out flat, watching the fluttering movement, feeling the reflection of that quaking in her soul. With a sigh, she rested her forehead against the cool wood and imagined that on the far side of the door, Killian leaned in and did the same.

  A moment later, she heard the creak of the chair as he sat, and it was only then that she recalled there was no light on the landing, and Killian had taken no candle.

  She wondered how he would read the story of “The Vampyre” in the dark.

  The house was still and silent when Sarah awakened the following morning. Pale fingers of light stole through the crack where the ancient, frayed curtains met. Recalling all that had passed the previous night, the fear of being hunted, the thrill of being kissed, she gathered her resolve and crossed to the door. Throwing it open, she found Killian gone from the hallway, and her magazine resting on the chair.

  He must have left with the dawn as he had warned her he would. She was both disappointed and relieved by that. Relieved, too, because the chocolate and ribbon were gone from the landing. He had taken them away, a small but welcome kindness.

  She washed and dressed with haste, for the hour was later than she preferred. Soon, she walked briskly along Portugal Street toward the hospital, her thoughts consumed by recollections of all that had passed between her and Killian, her emotions in a terrible state of confusion. Questions scurried about in her mind like the mice in the hallways of King’s College. She had run the gamut last night from abject terror as the unknown man chased her through the alleys, to absolute bliss as Killian kissed her, his mouth hot and hungry on her own.

  His kiss had aroused both her body and her mind, weaving her in a spell of delicious wonder. His abrupt withdrawal had left her adrift, uncertain what to think, what to feel.

  One thing she did know was that, oddly, last night she had slept better than any night since her father’s drowning, and she was grateful to Killian for that. After the terror she had endured on her panic-scored flight to Coptic Street, it was only the knowledge that he guarded her that had allowed her to sink into sweet slumber, and once there, she had dreamed of him.

  There was danger in allowing herself to succumb to the lure of his protection, for who would watch over her tonight and in the nights to come? Only herself, as it had been only herself for so many months now. She was proud of that, of her ability to find solutions and care for herself in a city that was far from kind to a woman alone. Still, the luxury of allowing herself to be protected for a single night had been a sweet and wonderful balm.

  And a distraction.

  In the end, she had never learned why Killian waited for her outside Mrs. Cowden’s house, the question of that forgotten in the muddle of
other concerns and the heady lure of his kiss.

  She was left wondering about that this morning as she made her way along the street, about his reasons for seeking her out last night.

  Reaching the hospital, she hurried inside, out of the biting wind. After hanging her cloak away, she went to the sick ward and found Mrs. Bayley there ahead of her, setting out bowls on the tray.

  “Have you heard?” the widow exclaimed, her eyes wide and round. “There’s been another death. This one worse than the others. The victim’s throat was torn open, and still not a drop of blood to be found. Explain that by bugs and fever and excoriation, if you can.”

  Reeling with the horror of Mrs. Bayley’s words, Sarah stood frozen in mute dismay. A greasy knot of dread congealed in her gut. Finally, she managed to croak, “Where?”

  “Surgical ward. Mr. Simon found him perhaps an hour past.”

  “What was Mr. Simon doing here so early? He usually comes in past ten.”

  “He said he had concern for the patient he trephined yesterday. Wanted to see how he had weathered the night.”

  Sarah held very still, sensing the answer before she even asked the question. “And how had he weathered the night?”

  “Oh, he’s the one who is dead.”

  The words scratched at Sarah’s composure and sent a whisper of foreboding curling through her veins like ice.

  Mrs. Bayley darted a quick glance about and dropped her voice. “Yesterday, Mr. Simon and Mr. Thayne had words over that patient. Mr. Thayne said that the man had been insensate for over a week since he fell from the roof of the Bull and Mouth Inn, said he wasn’t likely to get any better if Mr. Simon drilled a hole in his skull. But Mr. Simon said there was no way to know for certain and so he went ahead and did it anyway.”

  “And today the man is dead.”

  “Not just dead.” Mrs. Bayley pressed her lips in a tight line. “Murdered.”

  Horror clawed at Sarah then, from inside and out, the whisper of unease coalescing into chilling certainty that something terrible was about to take place. Without another word, she spun and ran down the hall to the surgical ward, skidding to a halt just inside the doors. She stood, trembling, her heart hammering, her palms damp.