I turned away just as Malik reached her, grabbing her by the elbows and forcing her back and away from me even though her body pushed violently to come to my aid.
There is no helping me, Madame Gypsy.
There is no help for the damned.
Through the smear of blood, I saw the slight smile on the fucker’s face as he lay dying underneath me, knowing he’d gotten in a good blow.
“This… is only… his beginning,” he choked out in delirium and glee.
“I will stop Méchant,” I swore to him in a low strained voice, wanting the last thing he heard to be his failure.
“You can try…”
With a savage growl, I drove my own blade into his neck, burying it to the hilt and twisting through his arteries and airway until I felt the life jerk from his body. Yanking it free, I knocked his face to the side and dug the blade vengefully into his skin.
The cross.
I didn’t choose the mark as a religious symbol. I chose it as a reminder.
I wanted Méchant to know each and every man he lost because of that night in the church—the night he’d slain an innocent woman and scarred an unknowing man. The cross was my way of marking payment for his sins in the form of one more lost lecherous life.
With the source of the threat gone, everything else came back fully into focus. The fleeing crowd. The presence of police and ambulances. The searing pain in my leg and side.
And just like that, my adrenaline and the skills I’d been taught kicked into gear.
Mechanically, as though I had no perception of my own injuries, I reached for the man’s mask I’d ripped off and rose. With a swift tug, the knife in my side clanked to the ground as I pushed the mask against the wound to stave off the bleeding.
Taking the last, undetonated explosive from his jacket, I walked with steps I felt were steady, though an onlooker would probably notice a distinct limp if not the drops of blood that began to trail behind me.
Dropping down into the metro, I faded into the fleeing crowd, too panicked to notice anything besides their proximity to safety let alone a scarred man bleeding from the side.
By the time I exited the subway, my steps and my head felt lighter, as though they were floating outside my body.
Get to Notre Dame.
Bandage the wound.
They were the only two objectives I had.
The edges of my vision faded to black as I pushed through the side door to the cathedral with one hand, the other still at my side, soaked with my own blood.
It was too risky to use the hidden passages like this. To open them, I’d have to use both hands and without the pressure on my wound, I knew I wouldn’t make it.
My steps dragged down the side of the sanctuary, lack of strength forcing me to reach out and steady myself on the wall. Finally, I reached the one hidden door I could open with a single hand—the one that would lead me to the safety of my attic.
Weakly, my fingers pushed and turned the decorative latch until the door sprung open in front of me to reveal the stairs.
And it was then, in delirium from the loss of blood, I made my mistake.
I stepped up first with the leg I’d been kicked in and the pain that ricocheted through my body was too much.
I reached out into the darkness to stop my fall, but I couldn’t see or feel anything.
“Quinton!”
The last thing I heard was the soft chimes of an angel coming closer… coming to take me home.
Esme
I couldn’t breathe.
Never in my life had I felt this kind of fear. Not when Malik pulled us into the sanctuary of the Saint Denis Basilica, saying that we’d be safe there until we heard sirens and the commotion began to die down.
Not when my heart beat out of my chest hearing the first explosion, knowing Quinton had disappeared into the crowd—knowing he was still out there and some sort of bomb had just gone off.
Not when my stomach turned and tumbled, finding him with those men—seeing the way he brutally attacked and killed them. The terrorists. For someone so entrenched in the consequences of terrorism, I’d never been in such close proximity to an act of terror before. Nor to the man trying to stop it.
But when I saw the glint of the other man’s knife, it was that moment that fear took hold of my bones like a hurricane. Sweeping through me though I tried to warn him. And crashing over me when the blade descended.
My heart stopped when Quinton’s body jerked forward, shock and pain marring his heroic features.
I thought I’d killed him.
My gargoyle.
The man who’d saved my life.
But as Malik pulled me away, I saw Quinton, with an almost superhuman strength, ignore the debilitating wound to his side to finish off the last man. Efficiently. Expertly.
Of course, I hoped he’d go to a hospital. But the man lived in a goddamn cathedral and killed people like it was his job. For so long, I only half heeded his warnings that he should be feared. Now, all those shadowed parts of him were exposed in harsh light.
Assassin… Hitman… whatever kind of man he was, didn’t go to a hospital.
So, when he disappeared from the scene at the sound of the incoming sirens, I knew Notre Dame was my only hope—my only chance to help him.
I’d been pacing in the center junction of the transept and the nave, lost in the aftermath of the shock and deafened by the pounding of my heart when I caught movement in the corner of my eye.
With his injuries, it had taken him longer to get here, especially if he hadn’t wanted to be seen.
Hunched and groaning with each step, his shoes squeaked slightly on the floor as they slid with his own blood and he turned into an alcove.
“Quinton!” I yelled his name, my sandals clattering over the stone as I rushed toward him.
I made it through the entryway with a gasp of disbelief, watching him turn something in the wall that popped open a door in front of him. Before I could yell again, he stepped forward, and I saw him start to go down.
“Quinton!” Tears streamed down my face, hearing the tortured cry escape from his lips as he collapsed into the hidden stairwell.
Kneeling at his side, I took stock of the situation. Most importantly, the blood that oozed from his side now did so unchecked.
Tearing my scarf from my head, I grunted and shuffled it around his unconscious weight until the fabric was secured around him. Shrugging out of my sweater, I folded it and pressed it against his wound, cinching it down with my scarf and tying it tight.
Ignoring how his blood quickly began to stain the rich yellow of the cotton, I finagled my way over him into the passage until I was standing on the step above him.
There was no way I could carry his weight up the steps, but hopefully, it wouldn’t hurt him too much to be dragged.
I bent over him, stopping with my lips just above his until I felt his faint breath against my skin, assuring me he was still alive.
“Good,” I grumbled, grabbing his wrists and pulling his arms above his head. “Because when you wake up, I’m liable to kill you myself. Stupid, stubborn gargoyle…”
Biting back every curse I knew, I struggled to slide him up the stairs, one plank at a time, praying that wherever it led to was where we needed to go.
He groaned at first when I began to move him, but by the time we turned the slight corner of the stairwell, he’d gone completely silent and my fear skyrocketed.
What if I should’ve just called an ambulance?
For what, Esme? To take him to the hospital so they could patch him up and arrest him for killing those three men?
I winced and pulled him higher. At this point, the hospital wasn’t an option.
What if he was dead?
I exhaled with a forceful whimper. I couldn’t think like that. I just had to get him up these steps.
Closing my eyes and ignoring the strain, I pulled until my ass bumped into a wall—a door behind me.
“Alhamduli
llah,” I breathed.
Laying his arms down, I squeezed the old, latch handle and let the door swing wide, revealing an attic-like room. I scanned the surroundings.
The angled beams clearly supported part of the roof. On the left side under the tilted frame lay a mattress with a few strewn blankets and a pillow on top of it. Continuing my sweep, I recognized the much smaller rose window at the far end of the room. In front of the window sat a desk, cluttered with a few papers and a fat beeswax candle, the scent mingling with the musk of aged wood and all man. A bare wooden chair sat in front of it, draped with a black coat.
To my right was a small three-drawer dresser next to a stack of shelves. I skimmed down them, some lined with an uneven assortment of books, others holding a variety of weapons, and on the bottom sat a bright red container labeled with a white cross.
A first-aid kit.
The amount of relief I felt was disproportional to the severity of his wound, but it was better than nothing.
Propping the door open with the chair, I grabbed his arms once more and pulled, crossing him over the threshold. Collapsing back onto the floor, I groaned with relief.
Wiping my brow, I panted and slid Quinton the final few feet over to his mattress. Searching the drawers, I found one with a second set of worn sheets, a darker gray compared to the white that was on there. Flinging the soft cotton open, I draped it over the mattress.
Clenching my teeth, I was grateful for the sparse living conditions because it meant I only had to lift him the thickness of the mattress, rather that up onto a normal bed frame. After a few exhausting minutes, I finally had him spread out on the bed, his pillow propping up his head.
I bent over his face once more, needing to feel the reassuring rush of his breath against my skin.
Okay. Breathe, Esme. What’s next?
I groaned. I was an architectural scholar, not a nurse. But sometimes, life doesn’t give us a choice in the kind of person we have to be in the moment.
And in this moment, I had to be the kind of person who did my best to help him.
And my best involved pulling out my phone and searching the internet for how to treat a stab wound.
Assess the damage.
Grabbing the first-aid kit, I opened it to find a pair of scissors on top.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured as a tear escaped off my cheek and onto his, sliding quickly over the smooth scar underneath it.
Focusing myself, I undid the tie in my scarf, biting my lip when I saw his wound was still bleeding, though not like it had been when he first collapsed.
Pushing that and my bloodied sweater to the side, I slid the scissors underneath the collar of his shirt and began to cut. Not even a minute later, his shirt was sectioned in the front and I pushed it away to reveal his injury.
And the rest of his hard flesh beneath it.
My thighs squeezed together where I knelt next to him on the mattress. I couldn’t—shouldn’t—be desiring him now. Good Lord, the man was unconscious. Still, as my fingers roamed over him, searching for any other hidden injuries or broken bones that I could feel, I couldn’t help but admire every sculpted inch that had been hidden from me until now.
But the truth was I had no idea what I was looking for. So, I did the next best thing—what everyone in this day and age did: I Googled it.
Pulling out my phone from the pocket in my pants, I searched for signs of a life-threatening chest injury, followed by a query on how to tell if a stab wound was severe or not.
Severe being a relative term in this case.
I ran my hands over his heated flesh, searching for anything sharp or protruding, and came up empty. The first good sign. Next, I took a look at the wound, still oozing thick, dark blood—reluctant proof that he was in fact human under his veneer of stone. Aside from the immediate area next to it, I didn’t see any purpling or bruising that extended farther on his abdomen—a sign of internal bleeding from damage to a vital organ.
With each mental checkbox, I breathed a little easier.
Digging through the kit once more, I pulled out a small bottle of sterile saline.
His face contorted and a muted grunt escaped his lips as I poured the cool solution over the wound, rising out any debris that might have been lodged in it.
Tearing open the pack of gauze from inside the case, I took one piece and gently wiped over and around the wound, praying I wasn’t making it worse.
Taking two more sheets of gauze, I moistened them with a few drops of the saline and applied a thin layer of the antibiotic ointment before laying them over the wound. Rummaging through the rest of the contents, I realized there were no Band-Aids big enough to cover it and there was no way I was lifting him to get the roller gauze around it.
“That’ll work,” I breathed, finding a roll of bandage tape inside the box. Cutting a few strips, I secured the gauze to his skin and tied my scarf back over it with firm pressure.
My hands, finally empty and stained with his blood, began to shake, adrenaline fading into worry.
“What else?” I asked myself, scanning the rest of him.
Then I recalled how I’d seen him limping into the alcove.
“Shit.” Scooting down next to the bottom of the mattress, I picked up the scissors once more and began to slice up the leg of his pants.
My teeth sunk into my lip but it didn’t completely stop the strangled cry that escaped as the fabric parted and revealed his bruised and swollen knee. Swallowing hard, I cut up higher, through his pants and the edge of his underwear before I had to stop, seeing no further sign of injury.
Still, the desire-filled and desperate part of me craved to cut off every inch of his clothing and drink my fill of the hard muscles I’d felt pressed against mine. I ached to cut away and reveal what lay beneath the swell of his groin, and to pleasure him the way he’d done to me.
Jerking back, I chastised myself for desiring an injured man. For the thread of selfish pleasure I got from baring his body and his scars to me.
Grabbing the ice pack, I squeezed until the inner pouch popped and activated it, placing it over his knee and using the roller bandage to secure it to the distended flesh.
Standing, I wiped the sweat from my brow, and recognized the sheen on his.
It was hot up here and his injuries were making him sweat harder.
I pulled the portable air-conditioning unit from the corner of the room and aimed it at the mattress.
Cool air and water.
Taking one of the bottles from next to his desk, I opened the lid and wet one of the cloths from the kit, folding it and placing it on his forehead. His chest rumbled in strained satisfaction.
At that moment, there were so many things I could have done.
I could’ve left. I could’ve searched out Léo Baudin, a man I knew to be his friend at the very least, and had him come take care of Quinton. I could have called the ambulance or the police.
I could’ve done a lot of things.
Instead, I let the tears began to fall as the weight of almost losing him finally settled over me. Whether it was the truth or not, it didn’t matter. The crushing pressure of shock on my heart watching as that man stabbed Quinton was something I hadn’t been able to process until this moment. Until he was in front of me, alive and stable.
And now that he was, the emotions I’d held back in order to do what needed to be done tore through me with brutal force.
I sank to my knees and buried my face in my hands and sobbed.
My chest heaved as I cried and apologized through a throat clogged with tears.
It was all my fault.
My fault he was there. My fault he’d been in the crowd. My fault he’d gone after those men. And my fault for distracting him and getting him injured.
Next I knew, I’d crawled onto the far side of the mattress, and curled against the uninjured side of him.
I never cried like this. Not since my parents died. And even then, I’d been too young to be able to cry wit
h the soul-crushing knowledge of what I’d lost. But I’d been old enough to know it was safer to never let anyone that close again.
Until Quinton.
I didn’t realize.
I didn’t realize just how much he’d come to mean to me until he was almost gone.
And, as my sobs finally suffered the exhaustion of my body, my hand drifted onto the warm expanse of his chest, calmed by its steady rise and fall, and I succumbed to sleep, praying I’d done enough to save the man who’d saved me.
Quinton
It was her warmth I noticed first.
I was never warm when I slept, even though the attics of the cathedral could get fairly hot in the summer. I was never warm like this.
This was the warmth that bled into your soul, the warmth it felt knowing it wasn’t wandering this world alone. Warmth of being cared about, cared for.
Warmth that burned a lot like love.
Warmth that I was probably imagining…
But the pain was all too real—the dull and aching in my knee and sharp and stabbing in my side.
I drew a long breath, wincing when bits and pieces of a dark dream filtered into my mind.
Like a flip-book comic, I caught snapshots of what had happened. The concert. The riot. The explosion.
It stung to peel my eyelids open, as though they’d been glued shut to let me rest in peace. The soft sunlight that filtered in through the rose window telling me it was the early hours of the morning.
It hurt to breathe, so I didn’t attempt to move. Rather I let my eyes pass over the attic, catching on the open first-aid kit next to my air conditioning unit which had been moved next to the bed and then on my desk chair propping open the door to the hidden stairs.
My eyes drifted shut again.
I remembered the man in the red skull mask, and the way Esme looked when she saw me attacking him.
I remembered feeling his blade sink into my side, but recalled nothing of how I got back to the church or how I got up here.
Then I remembered the chimes, just before everything went black, and I realized I wasn’t the one responsible for the changes in my surroundings.
I forced my eyes open again, this time noticing how dry my mouth felt. Looking down my body, I took in my sliced open pant leg. I saw what I assumed had been a cold ice pack at the time, now a lukewarm mass, strapped around my knee. Farther up, my destroyed shirt lay rumpled at my side to reveal my bare chest where a bandage was taped over my left side, now stained a deep red with dried blood.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 24
