The Hunter (Victorian Rebels Book 2)

Millie let anger drown her panic. She must stay angry if she was going to remain alive. Fear made her weak and reckless and muddled her thoughts.

“Argent is coming for me,” she lied. “He’ll find you.”

“I have no doubt he’s looking for you.” Dorshaw’s scalpel pressed against her breast, not hard enough to break the skin, but with just the right amount of pressure to let her know that he was a master of this blade.

Some of Millie’s anger gave way to the panic she desperately tried to smother.

“No one will find you down here. No one ever does.” Dorshaw traced the outline of the tops of her breasts with the scalpel, the lace giving way beneath the blade. Millie would never forget the sound of fabric cut by a surgery knife. “You belong to me. Don’t you see? I’ve won you. Body, heart, and soul. You’ll become a part of me.” He pressed an ear to her breast, listening to her heart, and Millie had to stop herself from tossing the contents of her stomach all over him.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to my body, you’ll never have my heart,” she vowed. “It belongs to my son.” The other bits were tattered by a man more lethal than this one but not even half as mad. “And my soul is my own.”

“But is it, though?” Seizing her sliced décolletage, Dorshaw ripped it away, baring her corset. “I’ve learned that a mother’s love is an extraordinary thing. Almost superhuman in nature. Mothers are stronger, more desperate to live, more accustomed to pain and fear and worry.” He leaned in, pressing his mouth to her ear. “They’re so much harder to break than other women. Take your friend, for instance, dear Agnes. She fought like an animal. She called Jakub’s name up until the end, you know.”

“You beast!” Millie screamed. A ball of something dark and heavy expanded behind her ribs. It gripped her in its clutches, brushing all fear and reason aside. “You bloody wretch!” She spat at him. Hoping he’d hit her. Wishing he’d do something to break her out of this near-hysterical rage. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done to her. I vow it. If I have to come back and haunt you, if I have to trade my soul to the devil, so be it! I will have vengeance for her life. And mine.”

He was hard; she could see it through his trousers. His breaths were labored and his eyes bright, and his hands trembled. He wiped her spittle from his cheek with his free hand and then licked his palm.

Millie gagged.

“Look what you do to me.” He held up his tremulous scalpel and made a sound of disbelief. “You are certainly not like the others. You’re special, Millie LeCour. How bored you’d have been with Argent. He’s such a cold fish. Such a wounded bird. But you and I, we’re alike. We’re creatures of life, of passion, of expression and experience. I’ve never wanted a woman while she was still alive. Not like—” Swallowing hard, he turned from her then, and Millie immediately began a succession of desperate movements as he rummaged through his satchel, this time producing some sort of clamp that could only be used to pry something delicate open and hold it there.

Millie’s movements became more frenzied as she struggled and swayed. No matter what happened down here, he was not coming near her with that thing. If she wasn’t surviving this, she wasn’t lingering, either. She wouldn’t be fodder for his sick amusement. She’d fight him to the last. She’d rather be dead while he carried out whatever indignities he had planned for her.

He picked certain instruments, inspected them, and set them on the edge of the table. “I wonder, my love, how much pain do you think you can take before you offer your heart to me? How much fear and horror can you behold until you’re bartering your soul? As much as a mother who’s borne her child in her own body? Is there a difference with a surrogate?”

The first bolt gave, and Millie rattled her chains to cover the sound, in the guise of a fruitless feminine struggle. “You’ll never know, you evil monster.”

He paused, and for a breathless moment, Millie thought he would turn around and put a stop to her struggles. But he resumed his work, organizing unneeded tools in his satchel. “Evil monster? Am I, though? Is there such a thing as evil?”

She actually paused to gape at him. “You murder people. For money, for pleasure. You take their lives from them, from the people they love.”

“Yes, but doesn’t your lover also do that?”

He had her there.

“He doesn’t delight in their pain. He doesn’t do these … these sick experiments.”

“Argent has never delighted in anything. God, he’s such a yawn.” Dorshaw snapped his satchel shut and strolled to the corner to stow it in its hiding place. “I would say that making love to him must have been like swiving a corpse, but the simile would be inappropriate considering my specific proclivities.”

He glanced back at her after putting the satchel where it belonged, and Millie froze as she captured his gaze with her own.

“If you think of it in these terms, I’m really not so bad.” He smiled encouragingly. “I’ve killed a few dozen people in my lifetime. Maybe a hundred. More than some, less than Argent. But do you know who can claim more casualties than even us?”

Millie shook her head, desperately trying not to glance upward, and praying he wouldn’t, either.

“The queen, for one,” he said smugly. “Pretty much any regimental soldier. An executioner for the crown. I met men in America who almost single-handedly slaughtered entire villages of native women and children. Beat and raped and burned them all, and other men bought them drinks in the taverns. But I’m evil?” Shaking his head, he gave a sigh of disbelief. “I think of myself as more akin to a predator in the wild. In order for me to survive, there must be casualties. But I don’t take more than is needed. I’m not at all greedy.” Turning, he crouched down and lifted the stone that would seal his satchel back away.

This was her chance, it was act or die.

Clenching her teeth against the strain, Millie gave one last powerful yank on her chain, directing all the movement at his turned back. Slack appeared when the other bolt gave.

The plate fell to the floor, and she retrieved it before Dorshaw turned. Aiming it at his head, she threw it with all her strength.

She fell short of her mark. The square plate hit him in the shoulder, drawing a snarl of pain and ripping through his coat, but not debilitating him.

Thinking quickly, Millie rolled the chain toward her, end over end, until she, again, held the plate in her hand.

“You vicious bitch.” Dorshaw lunged for the table, but she moved at the same time, aiming the plate as carefully as she could. She’d always been excellent at this. Once, she’d had to throw a flaming baton at a trapeze artist every night for six nights a week plus matinees.

A scream of rage ripped through her as she let the plate fly. This second throw landed on the side of his head, felling him with a very unmanly sound of alarm. The force of it wrenched Millie’s shoulder painfully, but she didn’t care. Though blood had begun to well from the wound at his temple, Dorshaw’s eyes were still open, and his chest lifting with breath.

“That was for Agnes.” Millie could feel her strength fading, her free arm beginning to tremble under the weight of the heavy chain and plate. He was wounded. Bleeding from his shoulder and head. She was too gone to care, too angry, too afraid, too close to getting herself free. All she had to do was kill him with her next throw, because she knew she only had one left before her energy gave out.

“This is for all those poor mothers and their missing boys.” Summoning a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, she flung the plate again, aiming right between the eyes.

Dorshaw rolled away and the plate landed harmlessly next to him. He seized her chain before she had a chance to pull it back. “I’m going to send your defiled corpse back to your lover,” he threatened, keeping the plate in his hand as he crawled toward her. Blood and dirt muddied the left side of his face, creating a demonic mask. “Your death will not be quick. You will twitch and struggle.”

She was still chained to the wall with one hand. Had no other weapons at her disposal. Once he was in range of her boot, she kicked at him, but his hand snaked out and captured her ankle, which he used to pull himself even closer.

“You will see your blood mingle with the dirt. You’ll watch the demons come for you, and you’ll welcome them if only to escape the horror of my face. If only to flee from the knowledge that it was I, a monster, who ended you, and that I will systematically assassinate every person who would miss you, until even your memory is dead.”

Millie jerked and struggled, kicked and twisted as furiously as she could. He might be wounded, but he was still so terribly strong. Fueled by pain, and fury, and insanity, he pulled himself up her leg, grasping at her skirts until they tore. His added weight put painful pressure on the shoulder still secured above her head.

Then she saw it. Her last chance. Perhaps no one would ever find her here and she’d die somewhere beneath the ground, but at least she could keep him from her son. From Christopher. At least he wouldn’t have to see her in a puddle of her own blood.

Because she somehow knew that would break what was left of him.

Maybe they would comfort each other, Jakub and Christopher, and remember her fondly. But they’d be alive. She’d make certain of it.

A clamor rang in her ear, the sound of footsteps. An incessant ringing. Suddenly she felt as though she were submerged in water. In a lake of fire and fury. She could only see her enemy. Could only hear his every breath that was a personal offense to her. She could already hear a demon calling her name, and the voice was painfully familiar.

Seizing the chain Dorshaw held in his hand, she used the slack to quickly wrap around his neck and then with a battle cry that would make a banshee proud, she pressed her knee against his throat and pulled the chain tight.

*   *   *

Christopher hated the catacombs. The smell reminded him of prison. Moisture and decay mixed with the echoes of the misery and treachery of the past etched into aging stone.

But he would die down here before he left without Millie.

Fear and helplessness was something he’d thought he’d left in the past. But since he’d realized Millie was in the clutches of his enemy, a man arguably as dangerous as himself, he hadn’t been able to expand his ribs enough to take in a real breath.

He’d lost his training. He was no longer just like water. He was a flood. Crashing through the gate of the Hyde Park tunnel, he used a lantern to light his way. The dust and frost had been disturbed by more than a few footprints. It was impossible to tell which ones were fresh.

Forging deeper underground, he sprinted down the tunnel. He could hear the footfalls of Blackwell and his men, but didn’t wait for them. The passageway divided into three, and Argent searched the ground for clues. Fewer footprints here, but none of them belonged to those inconceivably senseless high-heeled boots Millie favored. Thrusting his lantern forward, he paced back and forth, studying every inch.

There. Two thin drag marks leading to the tunnel off to the left. Too small and close together to be made by a cart.

He didn’t let himself think of why she was being dragged. Of what harm might have already befallen her. He couldn’t, or this awful, dark despair would rear up from the void in his soul and choke the life from him.

Steep, crumbling stairs led him down to an underground waterway, from which numerous arched stone tunnels branched. A dozen at least.

“Fuck!” Argent hurled the lantern at a wall. The explosion caused by glass and lantern oil against the stones stopped everyone else in their tracks.

“I sent for Crenshaw to bring his hounds,” Dorian said, coming up behind him and handing him a torch. “But he may be several minutes.”

“We may not have minutes,” Argent barked, staring into the oil-fueled flames and feeling his own blood run colder and colder.

“We can split up in the meantime,” Blackwell suggested.

Yes, Argent thought. He had to do something. He addressed the dangerous men behind him. “Each man takes a tunnel, go three hundred paces, mark your place and double back. Look for drag marks, scraps of clothing, flickering lights, holding cells, anything you can find. We’ll meet here and then venture farther if nothing turns up.”

“I’m coming with you,” said the Blackheart of Ben More.

“Every tunnel needs—”

“I counted. They’re covered. I’m not leaving your side.”

With a grunt, Argent turned and they silently jogged three hundred paces through a labyrinth with absolute vigilance. It was maddening. Every footfall could be bringing him closer to her, or taking him farther away. There was no way of knowing. The earth was either packed dirt or stone. Sometimes disturbed, other times not. But he found no sign of her.

They beat half the men back to the hub, and none of them could meet his eyes. “Sorry, sir,” the one called Chappy muttered. “I couldn’t find no’fing.”

Argent contemplated separating the man’s head from his shoulders out of anguish and violent frustration before a frantic echo sounded from their left.

He felt sick. Whether with hope or dread, he couldn’t tell. Surging down the tunnel from which the clamor ricocheted, he almost trampled Gregory Tallow, the slim, wily invert with a dreadful stutter.

“I—I didn’t hear them u-u-u-until I was almost b-back here.” Tallow panted, pointing down the tunnel. “S-s-s-screams,”

Screams.

“Millie!” Argent shot into the darkness, his long legs eating up the earth, faster than he’d ever run before.

“Argent?” Blackwell’s voice sounded far away. “Argent, wait for—”

The tunnel wound in sharp, perpendicular turns rather than snakelike curves. A few other doors and iron gates shot off into dark directions. It smelled like death down here. Like terror and pain and blood.

Then he heard it. Distant and chilling, like the sound of a reaper whispering in his ear.

Screams. Her screams.

“Millie!” He ran faster, sliding around turns and pushing off walls. His legs felt alternately strong and weak. She was alive. She was in pain. She was screaming. Desperate sounds of strain and fear punctuated by moments of terrible silence.

God, what was happening to her? What sort of unspeakable terrors had Dorshaw already enacted? He hadn’t had her in his clutches for long … but every moment was a drop of blood, the slice of flesh, the space of a breath.

Every breath she took was precious. Every inch of skin was beyond priceless.

Though he’d never heard anything so horrifying in his life as the sound of her cries, Argent prayed for them to continue. They were his beacon in the dark. They were his torment. His hell. But he needed them to find her. So he could rescue her.

So he could pull every scream of hers from Dorshaw’s own throat a hundredfold.

Dorshaw’s malevolent voice repeated through the catacombs. His awful threats invoking a dark, evil rage within Argent’s chest.

He turned the corner and caught the dim flicker of lanterns on stone. His vision narrowed. Chains rattled against walls. A struggle ensued behind those bars.

“Christ, no … no.” With a burst of speed, he leaped for the narrow ancient iron gate.

And nearly choked on his astonishment.

Millie, alive. Her dark hair in wild disarray, her shimmering teal bodice torn away and milky breasts heaving above her black silk corset. Her dark eyes snapped with an unholy fire. Her teeth were bared in the savage imitation of a lioness, the chain manacled to her delicate wrists wrapped around Dorshaw’s neck as she used her knee for leverage. Her slim elegant muscles strained against the skin of her bare arms.

In that lightning flash of a moment, Argent knew two things:

That her fierce strength was waning and she might not be able to hold the struggling, bleeding Dorshaw in check long enough to choke him unconscious. And—

That he was in love with her.

“No,” he whispered. Not certain which fact terrified him the most.

Drawing his pistol, he trained it on Dorshaw, but the angle made a shot too dangerous. At this caliber, the bullet could go through Dorshaw and puncture Millie.

Besides, he wanted to get his hands on the man with a relish he’d not thought possible.

Standing back at an angle to avoid ricochet, Argent shot through the thick iron lock.

The sound reverberated against the stone with deafening force, but Argent had been prepared for it, and he wrenched the chains off the gate and kicked it open.

*   *   *

The blast of the pistol broke the haze of bloodthirsty rage holding Millie in its thrall. She knew who’d come for her before she looked up. She trusted that she was safe, that this nightmare was over. Because a man who somehow continued to perform incredible, nigh impossible feats had kicked down the gates to her prison, liberating her body and soul.

The lanterns set his hair ablaze and glittered off eyes the color of the frozen north. His strength and prowess magnified the depth of his wrath as he entered, the pistol still smoking in his hand.

Millie realized that she’d been so, so wrong about him. All this time, she thought she’d made a deal with a demon. With the devil himself perhaps. That she’d signed her sinful contract in blood. That he was a man forged in the depths of hell and, as such, irrevocably doomed to a life of darkness and despair.

But that was just not so.

Christopher Argent was her fallen, avenging angel.

Not a seraphim. Nor a cherubic innocent garbed in white. But a guardian. A warrior. A boy who had traded his halo and wings, and perhaps even his soul, for a knife and a garrote and ultimate vengeance. He’d been baptized in blood and now he rose from the ashes, something hard and sinister and unholy, but ultimately redeemable.

He had a heart. She could see it in his eyes as he drank her in.

His arrival revitalized Dorshaw, whose struggles increased as her strength waned. She could feel the trembling now, the burning in her lungs and the aching of her muscles. She wanted to think that she could have done it. That she could have saved herself, that she could have taken a life. But it became clear that she would never know.

Christopher said nothing as he reached her and gently pried the chain from her aching fingers. His nostrils flared and taut muscles tested the seams of his shirt as he took a moment to thoroughly examine her, unspoken questions twitching on his hard lips.

“I—I’m all right.”

Nodding, he turned his attention to Dorshaw, and Millie couldn’t help but feel a slight touch of compassion for the villain.

Without seeming to put forth any effort, Christopher pulled the chain tight. Dorshaw’s eyes bulged, but an awful squeal of breath still struggled into his constricted throat. Exerting just the right amount of pressure, Christopher leaned down and put his cold, brutal, beautiful face the space of a breath from Dorshaw’s.

“Your death will not be quick.” Christopher repeated Dorshaw’s words to him, as a vein popped out on the dark assassin’s straining forehead. “You will twitch and struggle.”

And, indeed, he did. His boots made terrible sounds as they scraped across the dirt in frantic, panicked reflexes. Hands pawed at the chains, then at Christopher, but he ignored them as he pulled the chains incrementally tighter, knowing just how much pressure to exert.

“You’ll watch the demons come for you, and you’ll welcome them if only to escape the horror of my face. If only to flee from the knowledge that it was I, the superior monster, who ended you.”

Millie had never seen the throes of death this close before. No matter how evil the man had been, it was hard to watch him die, but she forced herself to. She wanted this. Wanted to experience this, knowing it would change her forever. It was the only way she’d not look for Dorshaw in the shadows. That she’d not see him down every alley, waiting for him to pounce. If she watched him die, she could let him go.

And so she did. Attached to the chain that killed him, she watched him struggle his last, and finally understood how one could take pleasure in the taking of a life.

When it was done, Christopher let the body drop to the dirt.

He wouldn’t look at her. Didn’t touch her.

“Christopher?”

While he searched for a key, other men spilled into the room like a foulmouthed river of peril, filling up the small chamber until she could no longer see the gate.

Their exclamations of pleasure and surprise at finding her alive were at once endearing and overwhelming. When she felt the first manacle fall away, she made a small noise of relief, and Christopher crowded her against the stone wall to unlock her other wrist.

His closeness was like a balm. He was a pillar of hard, warm muscle that directly contrasted with the cold stone at her back. Once free, she melted into him. His arms enfolded her and they stood like that in silence. In absolute stillness. Words escaped them both, but every sentiment passed between them with such intensity, to try and vocalize them would have cheapened the depth of their consolation.

The room fell quiet, as one by one, each of the men stood witness to something they’d never thought would transpire, and that they wouldn’t soon forget.

Christopher Argent, the largest, coldest, deadliest assassin any of them had ever heard of, swept a half-naked Millie LeCour off her feet, and held her to him and said not a word as he carried her out of the London underground and out into the night.