Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 61

Sebastian found his left arm unexpectedly weak, so he made more noise than he would have liked climbing into the ancient oak. Crouching on the lowest branch, he rested his back against the rough trunk, his breath coming hard and fast.

From some distance to his right came Stanton’s voice. “Devlin? You might as well give yourself up and stop this foolishness. You don’t have a chance. There are still three of us.”

Sebastian could see them now, Stanton and his man Burke. They were keeping close together, and they were going the wrong way, cutting along the side of the hill. For a moment Sebastian considered simply staying where he was. Except he knew that if they gave up and left, they would take his horse with them.

Casting a critical eye over the oak’s nearest boughs, he found a small, half-dead branch and leaned his weight against it until it broke off in his hand with a crack that echoed through the forest.

Stanton drew up, his gaze darting first one way, then the other. “It’s him.” He held the flintlock close, one finger curled around the trigger. Sebastian doubted Stanton had taken the time to reload, but it was a double-barreled pistol, which meant he still had one shot left. “Where did that come from?”

Sebastian knew a grim kind of amusement. The Baron’s combination of arrogance and incompetence might have been comical, except there was nothing funny about a man who could kill and eat a young boy, or whose attempt to cover up his ugly past had already caused the death of his own child.

Balancing carefully on his limb, Sebastian opened his hand and let the branch fall. It hit the rocks below with a clatter.

“There.” The man named Burke swung around. “He’s over there.”

Like hounds following the scent of a fox, the two men swept across the hillside, their gazes hard on the undergrowth of hawthorn and holly. They never thought to look up.

“I don’t see him.” Burke paused almost directly beneath Sebastian, his gaze searching the rainy hillside. “Where is he?”

“My shot clipped him.” Stanton crouched down to touch the leaf litter beneath the tree with one splayed hand. “Look. There’s blood. He must be—”

Slipping the handle of his knife between his clenched teeth, Sebastian gripped the rock with both hands and dropped straight down on the henchman, his full weight smashing the rock onto the man’s head.

The man collapsed beneath him, then lay utterly still.

Stanton backed away, the pistol clutched in a two-handed grip, his mouth going slack with shock. “My God. You smashed his head in.”

Wordlessly, Sebastian slipped the knife from his teeth and held it loosely in his right hand.

Stanton extended the pistol, his elbows locked. But he was shaking so badly the gun barrel waved wildly. “Stay back. I’ll shoot. You know I will.”

Sebastian’s lips pulled into a tight smile. “You have only one shot left. What if you miss?”

The Baron’s throat worked as he swallowed hard. The finger on the trigger twitched. Sebastian flipped the knife so that he held the blade between his thumb and forefinger, his gaze on the other man’s eyes.

He thought for a moment Stanton meant to put the pistol up. Then a wild kind of determination flared in the man’s eyes. Sebastian sent the knife whistling through the air just as Stanton squeezed the trigger.

The shot went wide, but Sebastian’s blade caught the big man in the throat. Blood spurted from the wound, spilled from both corners of his open mouth in dark rivulets. His legs buckled beneath him, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Sebastian surged to his feet. He could feel the sleeve of his coat wet and heavy against his arm and realized suddenly it wasn’t just wet from the rain. He was losing more blood than he’d first realized.

Staggering slightly, he walked to where Stanton lay. Blood still pulsed from the man’s throat, but it was slowing. Reaching down, Sebastian loosed the Baron’s grip on the pistol and thrust it into the waistband of his own breeches. The gun was empty now, and a thorough search of Stanton’s coat failed to turn up the powder and shot required to reload. But there were times when even an empty pistol had its uses. He searched both men for his own small flintlock, as well, but did not find it. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian retrieved his knife. He might need it again.

Leaning against the tree trunk, he yanked off his cravat and used it to bind up his arm as best he could. He stayed for a moment, trying to calm his roiling stomach and clear his head. Then he headed up the hill toward his black mare and the young blond man Stanton had called Horn.

Horn stood beside the horses, his head jerking this way and that as he searched the surrounding wood with wide, anxious eyes. Hunkering low, Sebastian crept up behind him, his knife in one hand, Stanton’s flintlock pistol in the other. The pistol was empty, of course, but Sebastian was betting on the hireling being too scared to realize that.

Treading softly in the wet, leafy humus, Sebastian pressed the barrel of the pistol behind Horn’s ear. “Move and I’ll blow your brains out.”

The youth froze.

Sebastian clicked back the hammer for dramatic effect. “This is your lucky day, my friend. You get to live.”

“Jesus Christ. Don’t kill m—” The man’s voice broke off in a whimper as Sebastian brought the pistol’s handle down like a club on the back of his pale blond head.

Yanking off Horn’s dark neckcloth, Sebastian used it to quickly bind the unconscious youth’s hands, just in case. A quick search of Horn’s pockets again failed to yield Sebastian’s flintlock, and he realized it must have been lost on the road when the Arab fell.

Pushing to his feet, his head swimming sickeningly, Sebastian turned toward the horses. The horses snorted with fear, smelling blood. He reached for the Arab’s reins and she tossed her head, her eyes wide. “Easy girl,” he crooned. “Easy.”

Hauling himself into the saddle, he started to turn toward the road. Then he hesitated, his gaze lingering on the clearing. Beyond the silent heap of the young blond man, Horn, Sebastian could see the bloodied body of the first man he’d killed; the bodies of the other two—Lord Stanton and his hireling Burke lay someplace out of sight farther down the hill. It occurred to Sebastian with a strange sense of detachment that he’d just killed three men. Yet, when he searched inside himself for some flicker of remorse, all he felt was a strange, detached kind of numbness. He knew the men he’d killed had been trying to kill him, but he wasn’t sure that should matter.

Wiping his sleeve across his wet face, he turned the Arab’s head toward the road and spurred her forward, toward Avery.