Sweet Revenge nu-1

by Zoë Archer

  Jack appeared to consider this idea. She’d tipped Nemesis’s hand, but there was no choice for it. He needed to know.

  “We’re going to lose Rockley,” he said. “He’ll bury himself so deep, we’ll never be able to get anything out of him. Unless…”

  “Unless?” Marco prompted.

  “We fake my death now,” said Jack.

  * * *

  He didn’t think they’d cheer at the idea. Turned out, he was right. Grim silence met his announcement. Eva, in particular, looked troubled.

  It oughtn’t annoy him. She was part of Nemesis, and he was just a pawn in their game. Made sense that she’d fret over the notion. He saw it in her eyes. Once Jack was “dead,” they’d have no more leverage over him. He’d have his liberty, and that was something they didn’t want. He wouldn’t be their leashed dog anymore. From the beginning, he’d made it clear that if he could find a way free of them, he’d take full advantage. Of course she wouldn’t like that.

  Still, it riled him to see her uneasy about taking off his collar. For all the hunger he and Eva felt for one another, they didn’t share trust.

  “Makes sense,” Simon mused. “If Rockley believes Dalton’s dead, he’ll think the threat against him is gone. The police will back off, and he’ll loosen security, giving us an opportunity to get our hands on the evidence.”

  Though Marco and Lazarus nodded, Eva continued to frown. “There must be another way,” she said, “or some different strategy we can use.”

  “If you’ve got a suggestion, love,” Jack said bitingly, “don’t keep it to yourself. We’d all like to hear how to keep me on a tether.”

  “I…” She glanced away. “I don’t.”

  “Settles that, don’t it?” He planted his hands on his hips. “It’s time to kill me.”

  * * *

  He never forgot the smell. Long after he’d left the narrow, grimy streets of the East End, when he’d kept a fine little flat in St. Luke’s, and even when he’d been in prison, where the air smelled of lye and porridge, he’d never quite gotten the scent of Bethnal Green from his memory.

  As he and Eva stole through the twisting lanes, darkness hanging over the alleys like a sulk, he was drowning in smell, in memories. Coal smoke, mud, fried fish, human filth, and here and there, the sweet stench of opium.

  He knew all of it. And bugger him if it didn’t force a small blade of sorrow between his ribs. It hadn’t changed here. Five years away, and the poor of London still lived like animals, hopelessness a dark slime that coated the uneven streets and ran down the crumbling walls.

  This was the place that had been his home, the place that made him. The streets were more his parent than his ma and nameless father had ever been.

  He didn’t feel a sense of homecoming, skulking through the lanes and alleys of his old neighborhood. He felt only a cold, distant sense of anger, that anyone should be forced to live ten in a room, with the only water coming from a filthy old pump, and babies crying all night because their bellies were empty.

  In a drab wool cloak, Eva kept silent beside him. Weak light from a gin palace spilled across her face. He looked for signs of disgust or shock in her expression.

  There were none. He remembered that she’d been raised by missionaries, and had probably spent too many hours in places like Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. She already knew how low people could sink.

  Still, her gaze was wary. That showed she was smart.

  Two men stumbled out of the gin palace. Jack put out an arm to shield her from the drunkards as the men threw wild punches at each other. Too busy beating each other to notice Jack and Eva, the drunks took their fight down into the gutter. But the brawlers blocked the way.

  Jack shoved them aside with his boot heel. They rolled away, still throwing punches.

  Someone inside the gin palace laughed, a high, shrill sound.

  “Keep moving,” Jack said in a low voice.

  Eva hurried on, with Jack right next to her.

  “I’ve studied maps of the area,” she said. “I’ve even been here before. But I have no idea where we are.”

  “Don’t worry. I do.” He turned down a snaking alley. “The maps you’ve seen, they’ll never show you the real lay of the land. Streets are alive down here. Always twisting, never where you think they’re going to be.”

  She stepped over a puddle of some unknown liquid. “So if they keep changing, how do you know where to go?”

  “Got the same animal blood in my veins,” he answered.

  They continued walking, passing three women who sat upon a stoop. A gang of almost a dozen children of all ages stood and played in the street. The clock might’ve chimed after midnight, but that didn’t mean young babes were snug and safe in their cradles. Three kids wearing only ragged shirts dragged sticks through the muck caking the road. When an infant started to cry, a small, thin girl scooped him up into her arms, trying to soothe him.

  They all stopped and stared as Jack and Eva passed. Half the children ran after them, their hands outstretched. He made sure to keep an eye on the pack he carried. Little hands made the best pickpockets.

  “Penny, sir? Spare a penny, miss?”

  Jack reached into his pockets. There were two coins in there, and he had to save them for later.

  “Here.” Eva pressed coins into the children’s open palms. The money disappeared right away. “That’s all I have, so none of you follow and ask for more.”

  Like startled pigeons, the kids ran off, their bare feet slapping through the mud.

  Eva watched them disappear into the darkness. “Hard to believe that we have homes lit by electricity, surgeries can be performed without the patient aware of a single cut of the scalpel, and so many other modern wonders, yet these children live as if it were the twelfth century.”

  “Time don’t mean anything here,” he said. “Not politics or science or anything else. Only keeping alive from one day to the next. That’s the only measure.”

  “It’s a goddamn sodding abomination,” she said with sudden, quick heat. “It’s a wonder anyone here survives childhood.”

  “A goodly number don’t.” He kept to the shadowed side of the lane. Though it’d been years since he’d last walked down the streets of Bethnal Green, he was still known in these parts. His tracks needed to stay covered. “Them that do find a way to keep living, somehow.”

  “Like you,” she murmured. “Not merely bare subsistence, but rising above it.”

  He used to think so. Think that he’d dragged himself up from the gutter into a swell life. Clean, healthy, properly fed. Women in his bed when he wanted them. A job that put money in his pocket. What else did he need?

  Something more than that, he realized. Something that made a difference past his own needs.

  Bloody hell, these Nemesis blighters are getting inside my brain.

  Not just Nemesis, but Eva. His body ached with wanting her. Yet it went beyond basic lust. Her drive, her backbone and daring. He’d thought someone could only feel greed for things—wealth, a fine carriage of one’s own—but that wasn’t so. You could be greedy for a person, too.

  Right now, he needed his thoughts sharp. Trouble was cheap and abundant in this part of the city, especially for a wanted man.

  “Down here.” He nodded toward a set of stairs that led toward a basement at the foot of a building. The blackness was even thicker at the bottom of the steps, making the door there barely visible.

  Eva stayed close behind him as he went down the stairs and rapped the side of his fist against the door.

  It creaked open, revealing a skeleton of an old man. His face looked even more skull-like as he lifted a low-burning lamp.

  “One bed or two?” the old man demanded as he stepped aside to let Jack and Eva enter. “We’re almost all full up for the night. An extra bed’ll cost you.”

  Jack dipped his head to keep from banging it on the low beams inside the long room. Shapes lined up in rows on the floor. Coughing punctuated
the silence, and the mutterings of drunkards sleeping off their latest trip to the bottom of a bottle. Someone hushed a fussing baby.

  He glanced at Eva beside him. Her mouth pressed into a tight line as she took in the dim, stale room and the two dozen people using it as their home until daylight. In all her visits to the slums as a missionary, she probably hadn’t seen places like this one.

  Beds was a nice way of saying a mound of moldy straw and a thin, tattered blanket crawling with lice.

  “No bed,” Jack said. “I want to know where the fight is tonight.”

  The old man eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t reckon what you’re talking about.”

  Jack held up a shilling. “The fight,” he prompted.

  “Abandoned slaughterhouse,” the old man answered quickly. “A half mile from here. Want me to point the way?”

  “I know it.” Jack dropped the shilling into the man’s bony hand. He and Eva turned to leave.

  “Sure you don’t want a bed for you and your lady?” the old man cackled. “Nice an’ comfy for the both of you.”

  Jack didn’t answer, escorting Eva back up the stairs. He’d sooner carve a portrait of the queen into his chest with a dull knife than have Eva spend a night here.

  Back on the street, he guided them through a maze of alleys toward the old slaughterhouse.

  “Did you ever sleep at a place like that?” she asked quietly.

  “After my ma died,” he said. “Me and Edith spent more than a few nights there, or wherever had a few beds open. Usually didn’t sleep well, on account of the rats biting on my fingers and toes.”

  She visibly shuddered, but at least she didn’t give him any pitying looks or try to say something consoling.

  An empty yard surrounded the old slaughterhouse, where the pens used to be. The wood that made up the pens had long since been scavenged. The slaughterhouse itself was a large brick building, parts of its roof caving in, with tall wide doors through which the condemned animals once had been driven. The business itself had shut down when Jack had been just a tyke, but some of the old-timers remembered the way the terrified cows used to bellow before they met the knife.

  Now, the sounds of men’s rowdy voices echoed around the yard.

  As Jack approached the building, he cast a wary look at Eva. He’d no doubt she could take care of herself, but he was leading her right into one of the roughest, meanest places he knew. At the first sign of trouble, he’d get her out of there.

  “Stay close to me inside,” he warned. “And don’t say much. Your accent is a dead giveaway you ain’t from these parts.”

  She nodded. Thank God she was sensible, and not one of those teacake-brained females who’d go charging into an unfamiliar, dangerous situation, convinced they had all the answers.

  Jack pressed his last shilling into the hand of the dead-eyed bruiser guarding the door. The bloke squinted at Jack for a moment, trying to place him.

  “Don’t I—”

  “No,” Jack said, cutting him off. “And you don’t want to.”

  The bruiser likely heard threats all the time, but after looking at Jack for a second longer, he realized that Jack could actually make good on them. He stepped aside and let Jack and Eva enter.

  A wall of shouts met them as soon as they stepped inside. Outside it had been cold enough to leave a crust of frost on puddles, but inside was hotter than Satan’s own chamber pot, and smelled as good, too. The air stank of sweat, tobacco, and cheap whiskey. At least a hundred men crowded around a ring that had been scratched in the dirt.

  Within the ring, two men faced off. They’d stripped down to the waist, and their bodies glistened with sweat and blood as they circled each other, fists upraised. The eye of one of the fighters had swollen shut. The other looked like he favored one leg. Probably he’d taken a hit there—low blows were counted just as much as any other.

  Swollen Eye danced forward, fists at the ready. He bobbed to one side as Hobbled swung a left hook, then he jabbed at Hobbled’s bad leg. His opponent sank down onto one knee. Swollen Eye darted closer and plowed his fist into Hobble’s jaw, sending the other man sprawling onto his back. The crowd roared in approval.

  “They don’t follow the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules,” Eva called to him above the racket.

  “Only rule is that you have to stop punching a man when he blacks out,” he answered. “And no knives in the ring.”

  That didn’t stop fighters from trying to smuggle in weapons. Jack’s hair covered the scar he had on his left temple, a souvenir from a piece of pig iron one of his opponents had gripped in his fist. But the bugger hadn’t held on to his advantage for long. After he’d been cut, Jack had knocked the sod to the ground and ground his boot heel onto his opponent’s wrist, until his fingers had spasmed open and Jack had kicked the pig iron away.

  Jack watched the fight now. Swollen Eye took advantage of Hobbled’s prone position, crouching over him and raining blows. Hobbled could barely lift his arms to protect himself as blood spurted. The crowd continued to cheer.

  He glanced at Eva. The sight of blood was common here, and between that and the heat, he half expected her to look faint. Instead, she watched the fight with a frown of concentration. He should’ve known that the sight of two men pummeling each other into paste wouldn’t upset her.

  Looking back to the ring, he noticed something. “The idiot’s lowering his guard,” he muttered to himself.

  Swollen Eye, confident in his victory, dropped his hands to taunt his opponent. Hobbled managed to raise up just enough to throw a right jab. It crashed into Swollen Eye’s face. With a groan heard above the shouting, Swollen Eye toppled backward into the dirt. He didn’t move. Not even when three men scurried into the ring and slapped his face as they shouted at him.

  Hobbled staggered to his feet. He waited as the three men continued to slap and yell at the downed fighter. Eventually, one of the men glanced over and shook his head. Hobbled grinned, showing big gaps in his teeth, and raised his hands in victory.

  The throng watching the match bellowed its approval. As Swollen Eye’s limp body was dragged off by his friends, Hobbled limped around the ring, accepting the crowd’s tribute.

  Hell, he remembered that. The flood of sound and praise that would wash over him as he stood with his arms lifted, spattered with the blood of his opponents. The spectators would roar at him, and he’d roar back. A bloodstained champion.

  He caught Eva watching him. Saw the understanding in her eyes. For as long as a match lasted, he’d been a god. Something more than another piece of slum trash.

  “You miss it,” she said.

  “Not the bruises and broken bones, I don’t.” But they both knew that wasn’t the truth. “Come on, the next fight’s about to start and I want to find Charlie before then.”

  She followed in his wake as he shoved through the crowd, clearing a path for her. “And Charlie is…?”

  “Old friend of mine,” he said over his shoulder. “Bookmaker.”

  “It’s only legal to gamble at racetracks.”

  He threw her a dry look. “Because everything else here’s strictly aboveboard.”

  A corner of her mouth turned up. “Right.”

  “But Charlie’s more than a bookmaker. If there’s something you want or need, anything at all, Charlie can get it for you.”

  As he pushed through the mob, he saw more than a few blokes give Eva the eye. She’d kept the hood of her cloak up, but women always snared attention at fights. Aside from her, only a handful of females were scattered through the crowd, and most of them looked like the sort who charged for their company.

  Jack glared down anyone who gave Eva more than a passing look. Just let one of the bastards try anything. He hadn’t had a decent fight in a long while.

  No one tried anything.

  At one edge of the building, men gathered, shaking handfuls of money at someone standing in the middle of the circle. A voice rose up above the crowd. “It’s six to one for O�
��Connell. Twelve to one he knocks Arkley out in the first five rounds. What’ll it be, lads?”

  There’d be no getting to Charlie until all the bets had been placed. Men surged forward, ready to have their wagers written down. This went on until someone beat a pipe against a metal bucket, signaling that the fight was about to start. The crowd around the bookmaker thinned as the spectators all turned toward the ring.

  The bookmaker stood there, writing in a battered notebook and holding a huge fistful of banknotes. Even though she was dressed in a skirt, she also wore a shirtwaist, tie, and a man’s waistcoat. Her dark hair had been tucked up into a bowler hat, and she held a cigar between her teeth.

  “Betting’s closed,” the bookmaker said as Jack stepped closer.

  “What’re the odds you’ve got the clap?” Jack asked.

  Her mouth dropped open as she looked up, and her cigar fell to the ground. “Diamond Jack!”

  “Hello, Charlie,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “This is Charlie?” Eva demanded. She hated the shrill note in her voice, as if she were some melodrama heroine, but, damn it, Jack had caught her by surprise. She had to wonder if he’d done it on purpose, just to see her look shocked. No doubt her eyes were round as oranges and her mouth hung open.

  “Charlotte Linton,” the bookmaker said with a cheerful grin, “but everyone round these parts calls me Charlie.” She appeared to be somewhere in her late thirties, possessing a sharp-edged attractiveness both at odds with and in perfect harmony with her rough surroundings.

  The crowds cheered as two more men proceeded to pummel each other in the ring.

  Charlie turned to Jack with an expression of stunned but pleased disbelief. “It’s really you, Diamond Jack?”

  “Must be,” he answered, “because I’ve got on his trousers.”

  The bookmaker threw back her head and laughed. Then grabbed Jack by his shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. Eva noted sourly that Jack enthusiastically returned the hug.

  “Blimey and bloody hell,” Charlie cried, “it is you! Got bigger, though.” Pulling back, she gave his bicep an appreciative squeeze. Eva wanted to shove her to the ground. “Didn’t think it was possible. If we had weight classes here, you’d have been at the top.”