Forged by Desire
Page 16

“You’re safe,” Garrett murmured. “He can’t hurt you. Not again. I promise.”
“No—” The girl’s face crumpled, her fingers grabbing onto Garrett’s coat as she sobbed. “Please… Please…”
Perry staggered away, unable to watch. It only reminded her of her own helplessness. She could hear Garrett’s voice, though. Gentle words. Doing what he did best. “Byrnes will look after you. You’re safe—”
Safe.
Picking up the lantern, Perry crossed the room, her boots crunching on glass. Behind her she heard Atherton and Thomas land in the darkness, where Garrett swiftly gave them orders. She couldn’t look at the glass cases or the women inside. Instead she stared at the steel examination table at the end of the room.
A surgery. Her hip hit a small rolling cart covered in gleaming implements. Just the sight of them made the heat drain from her face. A single light hung over the table, its bulb darkened. But she could imagine it bright and glaring. Imagine the gleam of it on steel, reflecting back off the scalpel—
—the straps cutting into her as she wriggled and jerked. Locked over her chest and arms, h*ps and thighs. Trapping her, no matter how much she fought—
“Perry?”
She jerked her hand away from the table. “Yes?”
Garrett stepped around it, his blue eyes burning through her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Better than those poor girls anyway. Wrapping her arms around herself, she shivered. Time to prove she was made of firmer pluck than this. To prove it to herself, if nothing else. “What do you want me to do?”
He looked at her, searching for any sign that she was going to suffer another bout of hysteria. Perry’s cheeks burned. How she hated those episodes. The breathing was the worst, because she thought she’d never draw another breath again. It had taken years to learn how to survive them. Years of meditation with Lynch, and surprisingly, the martial art he’d insisted she learn had helped.
“I’m fine,” she repeated, her voice just a little louder. “I want to help.”
Garrett gave a clipped nod. “We’re going to get the other three out. I’ll need you to help me.” He shot one last questioning look at the table, his expression darkening. “Then we need to work out how to locate this bastard and find out what the hell he was doing here.”
***
Water gushed over her, thick and salty. Perry caught the last girl in her arms as she slumped forward out of the tank, her wet stringy hair clinging to Perry’s face. Fingers raked over her, clutching at her arms. Fighting her.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered, staring into those pale green eyes. “You’re safe now.”
For a moment she felt a sense of kinship. This one was the fighter. But unlike Perry, she’d been unable to escape. That could have been her. Locked up like that. Or devil knows what else Hague had intended to do with her. If not for the single buckle that had torn from the straps holding her down, giving her just enough space to free her arm, something like this could have happened to her.
Byrnes helped her unclip the mask from over the girl’s mouth and nose. The suction gave a little pop as they pried it loose, the stale taste of air leaching from it with a hiss. That explained the metal canisters clipped to the walls beside each tank. Aether. The breath of life.
Perry dragged her coat off and draped it around the girl’s shoulders, her wet shirt clinging to her skin.
“Who are you?” the young woman sobbed.
“My name is Miss Lowell.” Hopefully the sight of another female would help to calm the woman. “I’m a Nighthawk. This is Byrnes, one of my companions.”
The woman’s eyes darted. “The…others? I know there were others. I could see them. See what he did to them.”
One of the girls hadn’t been breathing when they removed her from the case and another was in a perilous condition, the scar down her chest red and inflamed. The other Nighthawks had removed both of them to the medic coach where Dr. Gibson was fussing.
Perry gave a little shake of her head. “One is still breathing—her name is Alice. The others… Whatever he did to them, their bodies were fighting it.”
Byrnes shot Perry a warning glance. But if that were her, she would want to know. “What’s your name, miss?” he asked.
“Ava.” Haunted eyes glanced at the examination table, then darted away. “Ava McLaren.”
There was a faint Scottish burr to her voice. Perry stilled. “How long have you been here?”
“Where are we?” A hesitation as Ava swallowed. “The last I knew, I was in Edinburgh. It was May.”
Edinburgh. Perry squeezed her hand, holding on just a little too tightly. Edinburgh was close to the Moncrieff’s family home—and place of exile. “It’s November. And you’re in London. We were investigating a pair of murders in the factory when we found you.”
November, Ava mouthed. Any remaining color drained out of her cheeks, and she swayed in Perry’s arms. It brought Perry’s split knuckles closer to her face, and suddenly the woman stiffened, eyes locking on the torn and bleeding skin, her irises darkening.
A blue blood. Perry’s gaze jerked to Byrnes.
He slid his arms around Ava, tugging her tight against his chest as he stood. “I’ve got her,” he murmured. “You should see if you can stop the bleeding.”
What were the odds of the woman having the craving virus? A woman who’d been held captive by a man who liked to cut out girl’s hearts? It wasn’t the same circumstances as Hague—just similar enough to make something tighten in her chest.
For a moment she was frozen, then Perry leaped after them, yanking at Byrnes’s arm. “What did he do to you, Miss McLaren?” The words were harsh, but her heart was hammering in her ears. “Did he inject you with anything? Then cut you with a scalpel?”
“Perry,” Byrnes snapped, turning his shoulder as if to keep her away from the girl. “Bloody hell, give her time to catch her breath.”
Then they were gone and she had no answers other than those her mind could supply—and those she could imagine only too well.
Hague.
It had to be Hague. Didn’t it?
***
“I never…I never knew, I swear. They been ’ere, all along, ain’t they?” Mr. Mallory stood by the door to the factory, twisting his cap in his hands as he watched them put the bodies of the first two girls in the medic van.
Garrett clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We need to ask you a few questions about your missing overseer, Mr. Sykes.”
“Anythin’ you need,” Mallory replied, tears wetting his eyes as he watched Dr. Gibson slam the door shut on the medic coach.
“Has anybody seen him?” Garrett asked. “None of my Nighthawks can locate him. There’s been no answer at his address.”
“You think he did this?”
“We’re not certain,” Garrett replied. “He is, however, a person of interest.”
“No, I ain’t seen him. Don’t speak much, outside of work. He don’t seem to speak much to anyone, actually. Just locks himself up in that little room up there, goin’ over the books. Comes out every once in a while and just watches. Not like most overseers I’ve worked with. People don’t—they don’t like to cross him.”
“Has he made any threats against anyone?” Garrett’s instincts sharpened.
“No, quiet manner he has. Don’t ever raise his voice. Just…watches. It gives a man the right shivers, it does.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Near on six months as I can recollect. I wouldn’t know the precise date.”
Garrett asked several other questions but it was clear Mallory was shaken. Not even the ECHO could catch his interest this time around.
Outside it was mayhem. People strained along the fences, howling for details. He could see one or two familiar faces—the press with their bulbous cameras. Lurking about for him, no doubt. Well, they’d have to wait. He had more pressing matters to deal with. Gibson had pronounced the second girl dead and suspected an infection in her blood, considering the recent surgery. Alice had been subdued with a dose of laudanum and the doctor was seeing to her now.
Footsteps echoed him and he found Perry at his heels. Her lips were blue with the cold and she shivered, her arms wrapped around herself. Garrett glanced around for one of the blankets they’d dragged from the medic coach. “What are you doing? You’re freezing.” He draped it around her shoulders. “Get up on the seat beside Gibson and back to the guild. I don’t want to see you again until you’ve had a warm bath and changed your clothes.”
“I’m fine.”
“Perry…” he growled.
“You’re wet too.”
His own shirt clung to his chest. “I’ll return as soon as I get the men sorted out.” More Nighthawks had arrived from the guild to go over the laboratory and transport everything back to headquarters where it could be examined at leisure.
“Get Gibson to test them for the craving,” she said. “The last one we rescued—Ava—she’s a blue blood.”
“Truly?”
“I saw it in her eyes, Garrett. She wanted my blood.”
It was only then that he remembered her bloodied hands. The moment he tried to look at them, Perry snatched her wrist out of reach. It stirred his anger but he swallowed it down, forcing himself to leave her be. Later. When both of them had time. Then he was going to sit with her and damn well make certain she was barely bruised.
“Perhaps you’d best sit with her,” he instructed. “She’ll be frightened and unsure of what’s going on. You’ve experienced it—”
A flash of something—fright—lit through her eyes. There and gone again. “I’ll try to speak to her. She won’t let go of Byrnes at the moment.”
Both of them looked over to where the other man handed Ava up into the front of the medic coach. Once on the seat, the other man began rubbing at her hands to warm her up.
“Perhaps he’s not a lost cause, after all,” Garrett noted with some surprise.
“You only see him as a rival. I’ll hardly claim him to be garrulous, but he looked after me, Garrett, when you sent us out together. He doesn’t cluck over me like a mother hen the way you do, but he made certain he was always in the line of fire first.”
Garrett sighed and rubbed a hand through the back of his wet hair. “Go. Bathe. That’s an order. Tell Doyle he’s to make certain you’re warm and dry.”
“I’m not telling him any such thing,” she replied tartly, backing toward the coach. “I can look after myself, you know.”
A smile teased his lips. Doyle would take one look at her and she’d be in the steam baths below the guild, with warmed blood being delivered in a flagon, and a warm dressing robe and slippers. Perry might not know it, but looking after her had become somewhat of a conspiracy among the men.
“Go then, my lady peregrine. I’ll see you later, after this mess is sorted out.”
Eleven
“You sent a message to him, didn’t you?” Perry growled, not bothering to knock.
Garrett paused in dragging on a clean, white shirt to glance at her as she entered his bedchambers. The color suited him. They were so often in black, but white highlighted the bright blue of his eyes and his gleaming chestnut hair. He swiftly did the buttons up over his broad chest, then started on the cuffs. “Sent a message to who?”
“Doyle.”
A smile touched his lips. He was struggling with the buttons at his cuffs. “I take it you are clean and dry.”
“And fed, watered, and scolded,” she added, crossing to his side. “Here. Allow me.” Her bandaged hands caught his wrist, tugging the button through the material. The hard flex of his forearm bunched beneath her grip. “My hands are healed already, courtesy of the craving, but he insisted on slathering on some foul-smelling concoction.”
“Doyle doesn’t have any daughters. So be gracious.”
“You’re not my father, either,” she reminded him.
“Not even remotely. And don’t try to categorize me as a brother or cousin.”
A heavy silence fell between them. Full of a liquid awareness. Perry let go of his other sleeve, her cheeks flushed with heat. “I see you’ve been redecorating.”
He followed her out into the remnants of what had once been Lynch’s study. The bookshelves were swept clean and the desk, which had always overflowed with paperwork, was spotless. Someone had brought in a pair of red leather-studded sofas and a Turkish rug. They rested before the enormous hearth, with the faded square in the wallpaper above it indicating where a map had once hung.
Garrett tugged open a desk drawer and removed a dark green bottle and a pair of wineglasses. He shrugged, kicking the drawer shut. “It seemed time. I was growing weary of all the books. They’re not mine.”
There was more to it than that. Perry eyed his nonchalant expression and then the bottle. “Blud-wein?” In her state, it would go straight to her head.
A rare delicacy for a rogue blue blood. The sort of thing the Echelon drank, but supplies would be short now, what with the closure of the draining factories.
Garrett shot her one of his more devastating smiles. “One of the few things I kept from Lynch’s stock. He owes me a decent drop.”
She felt tired, glassy. Every so often she caught herself staring and knew she was ready for sleep. The shock of the day had torn through her like a knife. A long day, trying to settle Ava and Alice. Still it was nice to know some things hadn’t changed. She and Garrett often relaxed together like this after a horrendous shift on the streets. And she needed it right now. Almost as much as she’d needed his arms around her at the factory.