The clip-clop of horse’s hooves came closer out on the street.
Ellen’s heart thundered in her head. She couldn’t let this happen.
Louis gave her one more shove. “Get out of here, lass! That’s an order. Get to the ship. If we’re lucky, I can get away from him and join ye there, but ye must go now. If ye dinnae go now, we’re both finished. Understand? He’s following ye. I can give him the slip. Now run for it, and dinnae look back. Go.”
He planted one last violent kiss on her mouth and shoved her away.
That kiss told her everything she needed to know. She had to do this for him. She was the one putting him in danger. Once the wizard figured out she wasn’t here anymore, he would leave Louis alone. He would come after her instead.
She bolted into the shadows, but it ended at a brick wall. She could see no other way out when a door opened at her side. A woman in a filthy apron emerged carrying a bucket of some disgusting gray filth. She dumped it into the gutter and went back inside.
Ellen dared not give herself a chance to question. She pushed through the door after the woman. “Excuse me,” she exclaimed.
The woman drew back in surprise, but Ellen slipped past her in a mad rush for any place other than this. She dashed down a dark, narrow hallway into a large room full of people. Bare-breasted women sat on the laps of well-dressed gentlemen while other half-naked women carried trays of drinks and food around the room. A band played delicate music in one corner.
Ellen kept her head down and hustled through the place as fast as she could with no idea which way to go. As she rounded a corner into a large room, two men came through a door on the far side and she spotted the bright street outside. She dashed for freedom, knocking one of the men out of the way in her haste to get out. She broke into a different neighborhood with no Louis and no wizard in sight. The ship masts waved against the sky not far away. She could follow them to her destination.
Her soul ached leaving Louis behind, but if he was right, the ship’s crew would take her in. Maybe they could find a way to get Louis back too. She jumped forward to run for it when she heard a scuffle of commotion around the corner. Someone shouted, followed by a crash of breaking crockery. A woman screamed. Just then, a bunch of people charged around the other side of the building.
A quick assessment of her position told Ellen the noise came from where she’d left Louis. Was he fighting the wizard back there? He said the wizard would destroy him if it came to an all-out confrontation. She made up her mind in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t sacrifice him to save herself after everything he’d done to help her.
She rushed into the next street. Faceless houses and shops lined the thoroughfare. She spied the spotted horse standing at loose ends in someone’s front garden. It browsed the herbage over the fence with no rider in sight.
Ellen dashed toward it when she heard the noise again. More shouts and curses came from an alley nearby, and she recognized a male voice. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the wizard at the mouth of the alley with his back to her.
Chapter 14
The instant Ellen disappeared into the house, Louis whirled around to flee and came face-to-face with the man in the gray suit. The stranger towered between the brothel and a shoemaker’s shop, cutting off Louis’s only avenue of escape. The old man’s black eyes flashed under his three-cornered hat.
Louis stumbled back, but there was nowhere to run. His pulse drummed in his ears. He had to fight this monster, and that meant dying in this alley. He only hoped he could distract the wizard long enough for Ellen to get away. Nothing else mattered.
His hand flew to his saber, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good.
The wizard raised his cane and pointed the iron tip at Louis, then opened his mouth as if to speak.
Mad rage exploded out of Louis’s very core. If he was going down like this, he would go down swinging. He’d make this Falisa scum bleed before he was through. He launched himself at the old man and gave a devastating chop with his saber.
The wizard never moved.
A catastrophic blow from an invisible force hit Louis square in the chest. Splitting pain seared through him, sending him reeling back and knocking his blade out of his hand. He roared in agony, but it just wouldn’t stop. He tried to turn away, but the mysterious force pouring out of that cane had him in a death grip and wrenched him off his feet, lifting him into the air. He struggled with all his might but couldn’t move his arms or legs more than a few inches. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the wizard, stock-still with his cane still aimed at Louis. Smoldering, vicious hate contorted the wizard’s wrinkled face into a disgusting mask of brutal fury.
Louis writhed and screamed a foot off the ground. Every twitch of the wizard’s face sent him jerking one way and then the other while excruciating torture threatened to tear him apart. Something snapped inside his chest, and he shrieked in pain and terror. This charmer would tear him to pieces without ever smudging his pristine clothes. He would leave Louis’s broken corpse bleeding and destroyed on the cobblestones.
Louis wriggled around to face the horrid creature and bellowed out all his hopeless rage against the Falisa. They had killed so many of his people. Now it was his turn. At least he would go where all the fallen Angui went. He didn’t have to drag his ruined life through the centuries any longer.
The wizard gave a quick sideways slice of his cane.
The power holding Louis cut out in a twinkling, and he smashed onto the ground in a broken, huddled mass of pain. He wrestled himself onto his knees but couldn’t get up. His sweat-soaked hair hung in his eyes. He panted for breath he couldn’t quite catch. Every cell screamed in searing torment. He hated this tall, inviolate demon standing before him, but he hated his sneering smirk most of all. Louis would give anything to wring his puny neck.
The wizard drew himself up even straighter to grin down at his fallen enemy. He compressed his thin, delicate lips and swung his cane in one gloved hand while he held the other out at one side with the fingers curved in a genteel cup.
Louis made one heroic effort to get on his feet. His knees buckled, and he came down hard on the cobblestones. Another jolt of pain shot up his legs, and he grunted in hopeless despair.
The wizard only smiled. Then the smile wrenched and changed into a horrible grimace of deadly malice.
Louis stared up at the face of his killer. Seven thousand years had come to this, but at least he got a chance to look his murderer in the eye when it happened. Not many Angui enjoyed that privilege.
At that moment, the wizard’s eyes popped open in startled shock. He froze in place, and the smug satisfaction evaporated off his face. He stared at Louis in wonder as the cane clattered to the ground. Then, for no reason Louis could understand, the man folded at the knees and crumbled into a heap. His lanky body bumped on the paving stones, and Louis found himself gaping up at the dazed visage of Ellen Burke.
She held a heavy iron shovel high over one shoulder. She blinked, first at the fallen wizard and then at Louis. Her arms flopped, and the shovel hit the bricks. The sound echoed down the alley.
Louis struggled to breathe. “Lass!”
She looked back down at the old man. Her hair stuck to her sweaty cheeks, and her flushed skin radiated heat. Her lips trembled when she panted for breath, and her nostrils flared. Her face jolted from confusion to terror to anguish to determination and hate.
Louis could hardly believe his eyes. That was the second time she’d attacked someone and won, but one thought refocused him. They had to get out of here before anybody came around asking questions.
He propped one leg under him to stand up, but when he tried, he wound up pitching forward on his face.
In a heartbeat, Ellen appeared at his side and grabbed him under the arms. “Come on. Lean on me. We have to go.” She dragged him to his feet and propped him on her shoulder.
Louis staggered forward. “I’m so sorry, lass,” he growled. “It should be me helping ye now.
”
“Quiet,” she snarled. “Just keep moving.”
She guided him around the motionless body, turning her face into Louis’s shoulder so she wouldn’t see it. At least he could protect her from that.
They made their way down several more streets before she gave out. She stumbled into a dingy alleyway, retreating into the cool shadows. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I can’t carry you anymore. You’ll have to walk. Can you make it?”
“I’m all right, lass,” he breathed. “Just give me a moment to catch me breath, and I’ll make it the rest of the way.”
She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She shuddered, and her voice quavered. “I’m sorry I didn’t follow your instructions. I heard the noise, and I had to come back.”
“Dinnae apologize to me, lassie,” he replied. “It’s me who should be apologizing to ye.”
Her eyes popped open. “What for? You didn’t do anything.”
He closed her shaking hands in his and rubbed the two frozen blocks of flesh to infuse her with his warmth. “I’m sorry I sent ye away. That’s all. I shouldnae have done that. We should have run together. It was asking too much of ye, but I couldnae bear the thought of ye getting hurt. This is me own fault, so dinnae blame yerself fer what happened back there. Ye did what ye had to do, and ye did right.”
She stared down at her own hands. Her face contracted once in tortured despair. The next minute, she fought it down beneath her tough exterior. She could command her emotions to obey her, even in this. He watched the process unfold. In an instant, she stood before him, as composed as ever—on the surface, at least. Buried in the depths of her heart, the screaming agony of what she’d done—again!—haunted her. It always would. He understood that only too well.
If only he could have protected her from that… “Come along, lass,” he murmured. “We’ll be safe on board the ship and out to sea very soon.”
Her eyes drifted up to his face. She opened her mouth and closed it again. In those dark pools, he read the truth. She’d taken one man’s life and might have cost another his too. She could never forget that.
“Go on,” he urged. “Go on and say it. Ye cannae harm me by saying it, and it’ll do ye good to get it out in the open.”
“I didn’t know I could be…I didn’t know I could be this.”
He compressed her hands tighter in his grasp and whispered, “What ye are is a fighter. That’s what ye didnae ken ye were, but now ye do ken it. Ye’re Angui, lass, and all the women of the Angui are fighters, going all the way back to the dawn of man.”
Her jaw dropped. “All the women of the…what?”
He shrugged. The words wouldn’t go away now that he’d said them out loud. “Did ye really think ye could run from it? Dagar and Luppaki sent ye back here to warn us we were in danger from the Falisa. What do ye think that makes ye? The Falisa will consider ye Angui for life, no matter where ye go or what ye do. Ye’ve cast yer die, and now ye must play the numbers that come up. Ye made yer choice, and ye’re one of us now.”
Wild madness infected her countenance. Her gaze darted all over the place. She kept opening her mouth and closing it without saying anything while thoughts raced around her head.
Louis’s pulse quickened. His eyes flicked left and right, seeking out intruders. He tightened his grip on her, knowing she had to understand her position now, before she went another step. He brought her hands down on the air in one quick, sharp movement. “Ellen!”
“I didn’t…I didn’t know,” she blurted out. “I didn’t know when I made the choice it would turn out this way. I just… I just…”
She struggled to pull her hands away from him, but he held them fast. He had to calm her down before she ran amok and drew attention to them.
“They didnae tell ye back in yer own country?” he asked. “Didnae I tell ye? Maybe ye had no time for that, so I’ll have to tell ye now. Our women were warriors. They had their own warrior societies, with their own fighting techniques and training academies. The young girls would come up through the ranks, and when they graduated, they’d enter the army. They fought side by side with the boys. They’d wrestle their brothers in the streets and thrash the hide off them. Ye should have seen them…but never ye mind. They were warriors, and now ye’re one of them. I saw it on ye the moment we first met in Aberdeen. I didnae understand it at the time, but… Well, it all came out. Ye’ve done naught but rise since ye first arrived here. Ye’re Angui, lass. Ye’re as Angui as any other I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen the best.”
“I can’t be!” she shrieked. “I can’t be a…a murderer, and now that’s what I am!”
He kept his voice low, though he couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. “Do ye ken the women I’ve seen these last seven thousand years? Do ye ken what they’re like, with their spidery arms and their white skin and their corsets and their tight button shoes? Do ye ken what women like that do to a man? Do ye have any notion how I have craved a woman of our own kind, a woman who could pick up a weapon and fight with it? We all have, and we’ve had to haul our half-dead bodies through one infernal year after another surrounded by these ghoul-women. Ye have no idea what it’s like.” His sincere stare pierced through her.
She stared up at him with saucer eyes, trembling.
He hadn’t intended to say so much. It just sort of came out of its own accord, and now he’d gone and frightened her with it.
He broke his gaze away, desperate to retreat. He never allowed himself to feel the crushing misery of his situation, didn’t want to face it. He wanted to get the hell out of there.
To his surprise, she squeezed his hand back. In a flick of her eyelash, she burst to life again as her shock and horror fell away. “I didn’t know. No one ever told me.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, sensing her strength in the grip of her hands around his. “That’s the way it is. Now come. We havenae much time.”
She gave him a silent nod. She snatched a shuddery breath before they set off down the street, hand in hand, and strolled along causally so as not to attract attention. No one questioned them or looked sideways at them all the way to the harbor.
Chapter 15
Ellen didn’t look up all the way to the quay. She let Louis lead her up the gangway and onto the ship. He said something to someone, but she didn’t hear it.
When she heard a familiar voice, her head shot up and she stared at a tall man with shaggy blond hair. His full, bushy beard hung down to his white linen shirt and the saber belted at the side of his kilt hung past his knees. He wore no shoes or socks like the rest of the crew swarming barefooted all over the ship. His eyes flashed to her face once and then focused on Louis.
“We must put out as soon as possible,” Louis told him. “I dinnae ken if he’ll come after us. She bought us some time, but once he kens we’re here, he’ll send the whole nest of vipers after us.”
The big man stroked his beard and frowned. He kept casting wary glances at Ellen, his crisp blue eyes flashing fire. “Did ye send a message to the other one about all this?”
“I didnae have to.” Louis lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “She put him in his place.”
The big man jumped, his fierce eyes staring at Ellen.
She gazed down at the boards under his toes. They could only be talking about her killing Obasi, and it made her skin crawl.
The big Highlander grunted under his breath. “In that case, we’d better set to at the turning of the tide. Put her in the captain’s cabin for now. It’s empty, and it’s the nicest on board.”
“Aye.” Louis touched Ellen’s arm. “We’ll be under sail in an hour, so ye neednae worry over naught any longer. This is—”
“Ben Harris,” Ellen interrupted, returning the fearsome giant’s harsh glare. “I know him.”
Ben’s face smoldered. “I dinnae ken ye at all, madam, so ye have me at a disadvantage.”
“I know you from…” she began.
&nbs
p; Louis’s grip tightened on her arm, and his voice cut her to the quick. “Not now. Later. Come down and have dinner with us, Gilias, after ye get the vessel underway. We’ll discuss all the particulars there.”
“Aye, that’d be best,” Ben growled back.
Louis gave her arm a tug, but she stayed rooted to the spot. She and Ben Harris stared each other down for a long, dangerous minute. The man who orchestrated all Primary Industries’ success with the San Francisco City Council was Angui. She should have known. All the puzzle pieces fit together now. These immortals had maneuvered themselves close to her company to complete the Prometheus Formula—the Cipher’s Kiss, they called it.
Louis gave her arm a commanding yank and dragged her away from Ben, forcing her to follow him across the deck.
On her way up the steps up to the captain’s cabin, she spotted another man on deck she recognized. She took a second before she remembered. He was Noah Kelly, the construction contractor in charge of Primary Industries’ new building project.
All these strange and disturbing confrontations came at her from every side. Her shoulders sagged in relief when Louis pushed into the cabin where privacy swathed her in quiet. She could think here.
Louis took a turn around the room. “This is Ned’s cabin, but he’ll no’ come on board anytime soon.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Where is he?”
“I have no idea. Last I heard, he was on his way back to the Isle of Lewis.”
“Maybe he went to America,” she suggested.
Louis whirled around fast. “Why on earth would he go there?”
“Ree’s there, and the Cipher’s Kiss is there,” she told him. “He’d have no reason to hang around Scotland when the Cipher’s Kiss is over there.” Louis shook his head, but she went on without giving him a chance to interrupt. “You’ll all be over there soon. You’ll be on your way to rendezvous with Primary Industries. That’s where you’re going. You’re all in on this together.”
Spellbound by the Angui - Cipher's Kiss Book 2 Page 10
