The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

Chaos reigned at the Blackwell household. A dozen men gathered in the yard drawing the notice of curious neighbors. One of them opened the gate as Argent shoved his way through the gathering onlookers, and pounded up the drive at a dead run. A heavy weight burned within him, that sense of impending doom flaring into a frantic knowledge.

Bursting through the front entry, he bounced two men off the walls in his haste to get to the parlor. “Millie?” His heart beat her name, though even as he dashed into the room and searched every face, a part of him knew he wouldn’t find her.

Farah held a sobbing Jakub to her breast, stroking his hair as silent tears rolled down cheeks pale with worry. A harried Gemma bounced Blackwell’s fussy daughter, her own tears spilling onto the child’s dress. Murdoch, Blackwell’s grizzled Scottish steward, sat in the corner holding a bottle of Ravencroft’s finest whilst his lover, Gregory Tallow, held pressure to a bleeding torso wound.

“Where is she?” Argent bellowed.

“Argent.” Blackwell’s cool, dark voice behind him preceded the man’s gentle hand on his shoulder.

Strengthened by desperation, Argent turned on Blackwell and shoved him against the far wall, blocking out the varied sounds of shock and dismay. “Where. Is. Millie?” Argent slammed him again for emphasis.

Blackwell put up a hand, staying the approaching men drawing their weapons. “It’s only been a matter of minutes. I’m gathering men to search for her, Dorshaw took her from Hyde Park. He can’t have gone far.”

Argent stepped away with a desperate sound, took two paces, pulled at his hair, and then turned back, landing a hook to the jaw that not even Blackwell could have seen coming. “How could you let her out of your sight?” He swung again, but someone grabbed his wrist. He threw the bastard off, lunging for Dorian, only to be grappled by two men, one on each arm. A third, the one he’d tossed aside, snaked a thick elbow around his neck from behind, putting pressure on his throat.

The monstrous arm could only belong to Frank Walters, one of the biggest men alive, and famously a gentle giant, his wits having been stolen by one too many bashes to the head in prison.

Another of Blackwell’s men seized his middle. And still it took all their strength to keep Argent from tearing the Blackheart of Ben More to shreds.

Argent had helped to train these men, this underworld army, and he’d never regretted anything more in his life. “You had one job,” he yelled. “To keep her alive. How the bloody hell did she get into the park?”

“’Twas my fault, Argent,” Murdoch confessed through his gray beard. “I didna see him coming at me until he nigh well skewered me. I lost yer woman. I’m damned sorry for it.”

“H-he needs a doctor,” Tallow stuttered. “He’s losing too much blood.”

“One’s been sent for,” Farah said.

Dorian swiped at the back of his split and bleeding lip, his disfigured face contorted into an ugly sneer. “You’ll answer for that,” he vowed, but then he glanced past Argent toward his wife, and a grim sort of understanding settled upon his cruel features. “But it’ll wait until after we get your woman back.”

“If anything happens to her I swear to Christ, I’ll—”

“Stop it, all of you,” Farah ordered from behind him. “You’re upsetting the children.”

“It was me!” A tiny voice cut through the masculine growls with high-pitched clarity. Little feet pounded on the wood floors until Jakub stood in front of him, his spectacles fogged with emotion and his skin patched red with grief and fear. The child collapsed against him, thin arms surrounding his thighs and wails of grief wetting the side of his shirt. “It was me, Mr. Argent, it was my fault.” The boy lost his breath to sobs before he could continue. “I—I wanted to help you. I wanted to use what you taught me to keep her safe. I—I took a knife and snuck away to find you.”

Something crumpled inside of Argent, and again he struggled against the men holding him back.

In front of him, Blackwell nodded at Argent’s subduers, and he was released. Sinking to his knees, Argent allowed Jakub’s arms to encircle his neck and bury his little face in his throat, unleashing a tempest of tears against his skin. “He’s going to hurt her and it’s my fault,” the child cried. “I can’t lose her. She’s my mama. I want her. I want her back. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Argent wanted to believe the pressure in his throat was due to the clinging boy. More than anyone, he understood exactly the helplessness causing the violent spasms of grief and horror ripping through the tiny body heaving against his. Suddenly he found his arms around the boy and, as he held the distraught child against him, the decades-gone memory of his own fear and helplessness shuddered through every muscle and left him one raw, open wound.

He’d wanted her back, his mother. Begged her not to leave him. Cried and cried for help. Sobbed his apologies against her cold body. It had been his fault. If he’d not fought back, she might have lived. The guilt and rage had drowned the child he once was in a shallow pool of her blood.

“I want Mama,” the boy whimpered. “I want her back.”

“I do, too,” Argent said hoarsely, meaning it with every fiber of his being. Dragging Jakub away from him, he looked the boy right in the eyes, somewhat hidden behind the smeared glass. “I’m going after your mother, but I have to leave now. Do you promise to remain here, upon your honor?”

Jakub wiped his runny nose on his sleeve and nodded, fat tears still streaming down his miserable face. Argent took him by the shoulders and shook him gently. “Listen to me, Jakub. No matter what happens, this isn’t your fault. The blame lies solely on the shoulders of the man who took her. Do you understand me?”

Jakub swallowed, biting hard on his lower lip.

“You were being brave. You wanted to protect your mother. There’s nothing in the world more honorable than that. But until you’re a man, you have to leave that to me.”

“I promise, I’ll do anything.” Jakub surged against him. “I’ll do anything if you bring her home.”

Argent stood, the boy locked in his arms, and met Blackwell’s suspiciously bright eye. The Blackheart of Ben More’s jaw was clenched, his chin may have been unsteady, and the man whom he’d met only the year after the tragedy of his mother’s death nodded to him. A silent vow. He’d also lost his mother violently, and Argent knew the memory still haunted the man.

Turning to the room of wide-eyed and moist-eyed spectators, he deposited Jakub into Farah’s reaching arms. “We’ll look after him, Argent,” she reassured him. “No matter what.”

Argent nodded and turned to leave. He was going to tear this city apart, stone by fucking stone, if he had to. He was going to bring Millie home.

“He’ll take his time with her,” Blackwell said in a low voice, falling into step behind him as he left the parlor. “We have a good chance of tracking them.”

“We?” Argent clipped through clenched teeth, every heartbeat that passed a moment Millie could be hurting, or worse. Wrenching open the door to Blackwell’s study and pulling the statue lever that uncovered the panel of weapons behind the wall, Argent claimed an arsenal.

“You didn’t mean to find her alone, did you?” Blackwell handed him a pistol, which he stowed beneath his jacket before selecting a few scabbards and throwing knives. “I wouldn’t have found Farah without your help.”

“I wouldn’t have lost Millie without yours,” Argent bandied back, shouldering past Dorian to stalk toward the entrance.

“I didn’t know Dorshaw had escaped police custody.” Blackwell trailed him with long, powerful strides. “And I was fair certain you’d taken care of Thurston by then.”

Argent jogged down the front stairs of the Blackwell mansion, his mind on one thing.

Millie.

“I couldn’t very well keep her from searching for her son,” Dorian continued.

“You could have tied her to something.”

“Fair enough,” Dorian ceded, reaching out to block him from flinging the gate open. “Regardless of that, I’m coming with you, and bringing my men along. We’ll find her faster if we’re all looking.”

Argent whirled on Dorian, but was stunned to see all who surrounded him. Blackwell, Tallow, and even Walters, along with a few others he knew from Newgate. Wei Ping, Wu’s nephew, held a nasty-looking curved metal pipe with blades thrust through the edges. Murdoch, of course, had his pale face pressed to the parlor glass.

He knew these men. Knew their weaknesses, knew their strengths. Had worked, fought, killed, and bled beside them. Dorian and he had done the impossible, organized these cutthroats and criminals into a well-oiled machine.

Argent had always thought he’d been alone, that he was on one side, and the entire world on another. There were faces of men whom he still wouldn’t turn his back to in a dark alley, but they were here, ready to do his bidding.

Free of charge.

Whether out of loyalty, fear, advancement, or true sentiment, it didn’t matter. To Argent, it still meant something.

“I think he’s taken her to the tunnels.” He addressed them all, referring to the ever-growing intricate network of underground waterways, trade routes, and smuggling networks that had wound beneath the city since the time of the Romans. “Rumor’s always had it that Dorshaw lurks down there like a sewer rat. It’s why they never find the bodies, not even the police will venture in certain places beneath ground.”

“That’s our domain,” someone said. “We’ll find ’im down there, and we’ll fetch Miss LeCour. She’ll be back on that stage in no time, you’ll see.”

“Do whatever you can to save her.” Argent pushed open the gate and strode through the milling crowd of gaping gentry that parted in the wake of his wrath. “But Charles Dorshaw is mine.”

*   *   *

Millie had been afraid before in her lifetime, for many reasons. She’d portrayed fear and terror on stage a myriad of times. She’d run from imaginary villains, and a few real ones in her day. But until this moment, Millie realized she’d never truly experienced fear in its raw, terrible, uncomplicated entirety. She’d heard all the analogies: weak with fear. Paralyzed by it. While they provided apt description of the condition, she didn’t think the Bard, himself, could have found words for what she currently experienced. Because she very much doubted any existed. Her entire body was afraid. Her heart and head throbbed with it. Her limbs trembled with such force, she was almost grateful for the iron chains holding her arms above her head, as her legs threatened to give out at any moment. Her stomach churned with bile. Her mouth felt dry, and she couldn’t seem to swallow around her heavy tongue.

Where was she?

An ancient-looking iron gate interrupted bleak stone walls and a close, moldy ceiling. She could hear the trickle of water somewhere in the distance, but it sounded more like rain hitting cobblestones than the rush of a river. Two lanterns sputtered on short wicks and Millie stared at them, willing them to stay lit, her immediate fear being the dark. The thick, heavy chains from which she was suspended were bolted to the stone and mortar maybe three feet above her head on each side.

She was alone for now, but for a rickety wooden chair and a long, sturdy table. Strange, grimy stains settled into the wood of that table and dripped from its legs, fueling her certainty that people had died in this room. Many people.

And there was no doubt in her mind that she was next.

This was a place for demons, maybe underground. A place that never saw the sun and was hidden from heaven. All those lost to this place were abandoned to their cruel fate.

Millie thought of Andromeda offered to the monster to appease jealous gods. Where was her Perseus? Did Christopher know she was missing?

Would he even look for her?

Her chains scraped against the stone as she struggled against them, trying to wrench her wrists this way and that, hoping to make them small enough to slip from the manacles. It didn’t work, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. The air seemed too thin, and she gasped for it, hating the desperate little noises escaping her throat. It smelled like death in here, like rot and age, and fear. Stone dust peppered the dirt floor with more of the same.

How had this happened? One moment she was searching for Jakub with the jolly and capable Murdoch, and then a familiar tall man with dark hair thrust a knife in Murdoch’s belly and promised her in the loveliest voice that if she didn’t come with him, he’d dismember her child.

She’d agreed, of course, but he’d hit her anyway, so hard that she’d seen stars dance behind her eyelids, and the time it had taken him to drag her underground was lost in a haze of dizziness and pain.

“Jakub?” she croaked around a growing lump in her throat. “Jakub, are you here?” She couldn’t see through the darkness past the iron gate, and her greatest fear was that Jakub was out there in the shadows somewhere. Afraid. Alone. Or worse, not alone.

What if the monster was with him?

Renewing her fruitless struggle, she cried his name. “Answer me. Anyone? I’m here, come and find me!”

She called to whoever lurked out there in the darkness. To another hostage, to a would-be rescuer, to Charles Dorshaw, she didn’t care. If he was in here with her, then he wasn’t with Jakub. He wasn’t harming her son.

The darkness answered her with terrifying, soul-crushing silence. She couldn’t stand still and listen to it. While she still had breath left in her body, she had fire in her soul, and she would do whatever she could to escape. Which, at the moment … was nothing. The manacles held her fast, the stones revealed no weaknesses, and the door was on the other side of the cell.

Drat and blast and bloody hell.

Her growl of frustration echoed back at her as she jerked and yanked on her chains, pulling with all her strength. Which, admittedly, was far less than impressive, but she had to try. Dust spilled on the ground beside her. Especially the right side. What if that bolt were loose? The chamber seemed old enough, and if enough people had been held here, as desperate as her, struggling just as hard …

She tried not to think of that.

Leaning to the left, she levered her weight against the wall as much as she possibly could, and pulled on the chain with a grunt of effort. More dust fell. Encouraged, she leaned to the right, trying to get a different angle, and tried again. Shards of mortar joined the dust on the ground.

Her heart lifted. Trying different angles, she pulled and strained, training her eyes on the loosening bolt. Her wrists ached, the skin threatening to break. In tiny increments, the plate held by the two bolts separated from where it had been driven deep into the wall. If she could just keep going, she might get a hand free.

And then what?

She paused to gasp in a few breaths, shortened from exertion and fear. The flat iron plate the bolts secured for the chain could make a good weapon, there was that. And if she got one hand free, there was hope for the other.

Then she could worry about the gate. Studying the chains there, she knew a padlock of some kind held them in place. Millie had a few lock-picking skills gleaned from her brother Anzelm, before he left for America. Maybe she could find something—

The shadows shifted beyond the gate. Someone was out there. Was it her Perseus? Or the monster?

She knew the answer before the key turned in the ancient iron lock. It reached to her through the darkness on a wave of malevolent, maniacal evil.

Charles Dorshaw, he had come for her.

The chains clinked ominously as he pulled them from around the bars, one by one, as though each link represented the last of the minutes in which she had to live. The gate swung open, and Dorshaw oozed into the small room.

He studied her with the most terrifying gaze. He looked at her in the way she imagined a proud father would regard his grown progeny, a strange mixture of accomplishment and anticipation for the future.

“For a moment there, I thought you’d slipped through my fingers, Miss LeCour,” he said pleasantly. “But with Argent at Lord Thurston’s, I knew you’d be vulnerable.” Turning, he secured the chain again, wrapping it twice around the bars, and clipped a lock the size of her hand through the links. Then, he set about turning the wicks up on the lanterns that were set in both of the far corners of the small room, flicking his gaze back and forth from her to them and then adjusting. She’d seen Mr. Howard, the stage manager, do something quite similar before each performance.

Millie wondered what sort of horrific production Mr. Dorshaw had planned for the evening and a succession of tremors overtook her.

“Where is my son?” she demanded in a surprisingly steady voice. “What have you done with Jakub?”

Plucking his white gloves from thin, graceful fingers, he regarded her from beneath his lashes with a cryptic smile. Small lacerations interrupted his handsome visage, none of them deep enough to scar, but they added to his menace. “I assure you, I don’t know where your son is at this precise moment.”

“If you’ve so much as touched him, I’ll see your heart separated from your chest,” she threatened, surging against her chains.

More of the mortar gave way, but if Dorshaw noticed, he didn’t mention it.

Lust flared in his eyes. Lust, possession, and unholy anticipation. She’d seen it before, on the face of a different assassin, but she’d welcomed it then.

He sidled closer, that terrible little smile lifting the corner of his split lip. “My, my, Millie, does Argent know how fierce you are? How merciless? Is that why he wanted you so badly, I wonder?”

Wanted … past tense. Millie couldn’t fathom why that should matter at a time like this, why she would even mark it, but she did, and it pierced her like a hunter’s arrow.

“Where is my son?” she screamed at him, kicking out, but falling short as he stood just out of reach.

“I didn’t lie to you.” He shrugged, his expression never changing. “I don’t know where your son is, I never had him to begin with. I imagine he’s back at the Blackwell residence by now.”

It was relief that did her legs in. She sagged against her chains until her shoulders protested. “Oh thank you, God,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank Him just yet, perhaps save that for when you meet Him.” Dorshaw strolled to the left wall and removed a gray stone, uncovering a generous nook. From within it, he pulled a satchel and replaced the stone. The satchel he set on the long table, and each instrument he withdrew from it was more horrifying than the last.

Millie’s eyes widened and her heart leaped another increment with the appearance of every new item. A bone saw, a hand drill, a scalpel, some sort of forceps, and a few things she’d never seen before and couldn’t comprehend. Dorshaw was a madman with a doctor’s implements.

In that moment she knew. She knew he was the man who’d killed Agnes all those years ago. Knew that he’d left her friend’s womb and her own bloodied gloves for the police to find.

“Why do you do this?” she asked. “How can you be so evil?”

“It’s my vocation,” he explained patiently as he organized his tools with the precision of a physician. “We all have to eat, don’t we?” He let the disgusting implication of that statement hang in the air, and Millie felt the blood drain from her face.

“If this is nothing but a bargain for you, might we strike another?” It had worked for her before. If money was his motivation, she’d give him everything she had.

He tossed her an apologetic look. “It’s too late for that sort of thing.”

“Why?”

“Because, my darling, what we have here is a triangle of Olympian proportions.”

Millie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“We all have our singular talents, don’t we?” He picked up the scalpel and turned to her. “And yours, dear lady, is capturing the heart. I’ve seen you do it on stage, delivering your lines in such a way that by intermission, everyone is already besotted with you, including myself, I’m not ashamed to admit. I’ve watched you on many occasions.” On any other face, his sly smile would have been charming. But as he moved closer, Millie’s blood turned to ice.

“But your talents reach beyond that, don’t they?” he continued. “You beguile men. You understand them. You’ve made a boy that is not of your body love you as fiercely as he would any mother. You’ve stolen the heart of the man even I was convinced was the most coldhearted, unfeeling killer in the empire. To be loved by the frigid, disciplined Christopher Argent … what must that be like?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Millie spat. “He doesn’t love me. We had a … physical arrangement, that is all.”

He laughed then, a musical, happy sound, ruptured by the stones. The echoes of his mirth turned demonic and brought unhallowed tears to Millie’s eyes. “Don’t be a willfully blind fool,” he said tenderly, approaching her from the side this time to avoid the lash of her foot. “You have, indeed, beguiled the poor man, so much so that he doesn’t even know which end is up anymore.”

Reaching out, he caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers, and she flinched away from him, though her chains held her fast. “So lovely,” he whispered.

Millie wrenched her neck as far away as she could. “You disgust me.”

“I know.” Dorshaw chuckled again. “There are many things that Argent and I have in common, other than our taste in women, of course. One of which is that our work keeps us so busy, we don’t have the time to properly woo a woman. And, when there’s competition for the affections of the lady we desire, things become so much more complicated, and so we must take matters into our own hands.”

Millie gathered her courage, looked him in the eyes, and asked the question she knew she didn’t want the answer to. “What do you mean?”

The cold bite of steel pressed against the base of her throat, and dragged lower, slicing through the gauzy fabric at her neck and chest, to dip in between her cleavage.

Millie stopped breathing.

“You’ve stolen the heart right out of my chest, Millicent LeCour.” Dorshaw’s eyes burned with earnest intensity. “My only recourse is to return the favor.”