What Angels Fear

Chapter 61

Sebastian felt the pain of the shot rip like fire through the flesh of his thigh, just before they hit the floorboards. At the last instant he managed to twist so that Kat fell half on top of him and he absorbed most of the impact himself.

He rolled, shifting her weight so that she lay within the protective curve of his body. He could hear the rasp of her breathing, open mouthed behind the gag, but he had no way of knowing if she had taken any of the shot herself. Bringing his lips close to her ear, he whispered softly, “Lie still.”

He felt rather than saw her nodded response, for without the lanterns and surrounded as they were by towering piles of crates and wool bales, the blackness of the night seemed nearly complete.

Moving swiftly in the dark, he sliced through the ropes binding her ankles and tore away the coils wrapping her legs. Cautiously, he ran his hands up over her body. It was just below her ribs he felt the warm sticky wetness of blood.

His heart thudding painfully in his chest, he ripped the cravat from his neck and pressed the quickly folded cloth against her side, unable in the thick, unfamiliar blackness of the foggy night to gauge the seriousness of the wound. Holding the cloth tight with one hand, he worked awkwardly to slice the ropes from her wrists before moving to ease the gag from her mouth.

Her hand caught at his, squeezed his fingers in a silent, trembling communication, then slid away to flutter down to her bloody side.

One cheek pressed against her hair, Sebastian willed his breathing to still as he strained to penetrate the hushed blackness of night. He knew that at the time of the blunderbuss’s firing, Wilcox had been hidden amongst the crates back beneath the stairs. But he couldn’t be certain the man hadn’t moved since then. And while Sebastian doubted Wilcox’s ability to reload a blunderbuss in the dark, there was no way of knowing how many firearms he had with him. Even Kat wouldn’t know if the man had hidden a stash of carbines or pistols at various points about the warehouse before he brought her here.

If he’d been alone, Sebastian would have taken the offensive, trusting his training and the unnatural quickness of his senses to even out the disadvantages of being unarmed and unfamiliar with his surroundings. But he couldn’t leave Kat, alone and vulnerable and hurt.

Yet as the silence in the warehouse stretched out, a dark and tangible thing, Sebastian realized he couldn’t afford to wait for Wilcox to make the next move, either. He had no way of knowing how badly Kat was injured, but he could feel her life’s blood seeping hot and wet through the thick folds of his cravat, could smell the coppery tang mingling with the scents of salt and lanolin that lay so heavy on the night air.

He took her hand in his and pressed it to the cloth at her side, then slipped his own hand away. Dipping his head, he brushed her cheek with his lips and found her face cold and unnaturally clammy. I’m not leaving you, he was telling her, although he had no way of knowing whether or not she understood.

He could feel the cold dampness rising up from the water through the opening beside them, for their fall had brought them heart-stoppingly close to the edge of the trapdoor. The faint outline of a stack of coffee sacks showed near the opening’s edge. Moving by slow degrees, he was able to shift his weight until his shoulder touched one of the sacks.

Gritting his teeth, he heaved, tipping the coffee over the edge. Then he rolled quickly away, taking Kat with him as the heavy bag flopped down to tumble some eight feet or more before sliding into the black water with a long and satisfyingly loud plop.

Her trembling body held tight against his, Sebastian waited for another explosion of gunfire. But there was only a silence filled with the wash of ripples radiating out to slop against the timber supports before fading away into nothing.

Wilcox’s voice came to him, low and mocking from out of the shadows to his left. “A pitiful ruse, Devlin. What were you expecting me to do? Carelessly venture forth on the assumption you’d slipped away?”

Unwilling to give away their own position, Sebastian smiled grimly into the night. So the bastard had moved to a new position, behind the bales of Australian wool that lay between Sebastian and the doors leading out to the loading dock.

“An interesting standoff,” Wilcox continued. “One might be tempted to say I’ve lost the advantage. Except that I can smell blood, Devlin. Yours, I wonder? Or hers? I can afford to wait out the night. Can you?”

Kat’s hand snaked out, suddenly, to touch Sebastian’s arm. “Sebastian,” she whispered.

But he had already seen it himself: a faint glow of orange growing steadily brighter behind the stack of wool bales near the base of the stairs. A spark from the blunderbuss’s explosion must have landed to smolder amidst the lanolin-rich bales. A breath of air stirred by the draft rising off the open trapdoor brought with it the faintest hint of burning raw wool, pungent and unmistakable. Then the entire pile burst into flames.

As Sebastian watched, the flames leapt high, carried by the updraft from the open water door. With a whoosh, the old timbers of the staircase caught, coming alive with a crackling dance of fire that sent black smoke roiling through the building.

He heard Kat suck in her breath on a stifled gasp and knew the full implications of the fire were not lost upon her. Wilcox was between them and the double doors leading to the water’s edge. With the stairs to the second story aflame and the main entrance to the lane padlocked on the outside, the only other way out the building was through the trapdoor. But it was an eight-foot drop into the icy cold waters of the basin; half-fainting from loss of blood and weighed down by the heavy velvet train of her riding habit, Kat would surely drown.

All around them, the warehouse and its contents were going up like a pitch-soaked torch. Here on the floor, near the open trapdoor, the air was still relatively clear, but it wouldn’t be for long. They had to get out, now.

From the sound of Wilcox’s hacking cough, Sebastian realized the man was moving again. The bar on the dockside doors gave a metallic shriek as it was yanked back. For a moment, the swirling black smoke parted. He saw the doors open, a man’s form showing dark and solid against the foggy night sky. Then it was gone.

Kat’s fingers curled around Sebastian’s arm, gripping tight. In the eerie red glow of the fire he could now see her quite clearly. The entire side of her riding habit was dark with blood.

“Christ.” No longer constrained by the fear of drawing Wilcox’s gunfire, Sebastian moved quickly, tearing long strips of cloth from her train and tying them tightly around the wound. “We’re going to have to follow him out that door. You realize that, don’t you?”

Kat shook her head, her eyes wide in a pale face. “No. He still has a pistol. If we go through that door, he’ll be waiting for us.”

Sebastian gathered her into his arms. “We’ve no choice.” He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the fire. “The doors to the lane are padlocked from the outside.”

“Then break the lock.”

Sebastian glanced toward the front of the building. Already, the smoke was so thick that each breath burned his throat and tore at his lungs. “I can try.”

Coughing badly, he carried her to where she could catch a breath of the fresh air flowing in from the gap beneath the two front doors. Casting about in the thickening smoke, he found a heavy sea chest, bound with brass but small enough that he could grasp it with both hands. Using the end of the chest as a battering ram, he slammed it against the juncture of the heavy wooden doors. His aim was to break the lock, or at least tear off the hasp. He could feel the heat of the flames searing his back, sucking the air from his lungs. Gritting his teeth, he slammed the chest into the doors a second time, and heard a satisfying crack.

With all his strength, he rammed the doors a third time. The chest shattered in his hands.

“It’s no use,” he cried, heaving the chest aside. “We have to go out the back.”

He bent to lift Kat into his arms, but she clutched his chest and shook her head. “Leave me. Without me, you can slip through the water door.”

He met her gaze, his chest jerking for breath beneath her spread fingers. “I’m not leaving you. So you may as well give over trying to be so bloody noble and simply accept that it’s my turn.”

There was an instant’s silence; then he heard her answering laugh, faint but true.

With a tearing roar, the great overhanging beam from the central well collapsed in a violent shower of sparks. “Bloody hell,” Sebastian swore.

Clutching Kat to him, dodging fiery bales and falling debris, he sprinted across the warehouse floor. For one wretched moment he thought he’d become disoriented and lost his way in the thickening smoke. Then he saw the open doorway framing a rectangle of gray mist beyond, and he burst through into the cool, lifegiving air of the night.

He’d expected to find Wilcox there on the dock, beside the basin. But the dock stretched out empty before them.

“He must have heard you trying to break through the front doors and gone around,” said Kat, coughing badly.

“Maybe.” Sebastian’s own voice was a pained rasp. Or maybe Wilcox was simply waiting for them at the end of that long dark alleyway that ran along the north side of the warehouse.

“Set me down. I can walk,” she said.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” She pushed away from him so that her feet slid to the ground. Then she said, “Sorry. A miscalculation,” and fainted dead away.

Swinging her up into his arms again, Sebastian turned south, away from the alley and the dangers that might lurk there. He’d thought the pile of crates at the juncture of the two buildings only partially obstructed the dock, but he saw now that he was wrong, that the way was blocked completely. He had no choice but to go north.

By now, the flames were shooting from the warehouse’s upper story. One by one, the windows began to shatter, the night filling with the sound of breaking glass as the splintered shards rained down around them. Sheltering Kat with his own body, broken glass crunching beneath his boots, Sebastian ran. As he ducked past the mouth of the alleyway, he saw it filled with smoke and leaping flames from the burning building beside it. If Wilcox had been there, waiting, the heat and breaking glass would have driven him back.

The fire roaring behind him, Sebastian kept to the strip of narrow dock running along the edge of the basin. Passing the row of ancient brick warehouses, he worked his way north. The black waters of the basin reflected the leaping flames, while the fog caught the glow of savage orange until it seemed that the very night around him was afire.

He could see another passageway ahead, leading off to the left, that he hoped would take him inland. Then his heel caught on an uneven plank and he stumbled, going down as his wounded leg gave way beneath him in a spasm of pain, white hot and nearly blinding.

He sank to his knees, Kat still held, insensible, in his arms. He was aware of the distant heat of the fire and the ache in his seared lungs as he struggled to suck in air. Gathering his strength, he was about to push up again when he heard the click of a pistol’s hammer being drawn back, and Wilcox’s voice saying, “Bad choice, Devlin.”