Page 98 of The Duke
Cole died a little in that moment.
“You don’t even know what she’s been through because of you, do you?” The astonished disgust in Jeremy’s voice dishonored him.
Did he? “I never meant to hurt her.”
“Empty words, they say.” Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “Empty words from an empty man. Did you know saving your worthless life cost her her position at the hospital? She came tomewhen it happened. Not you. Told me the sad tale, that she worried her family would starve. That night, she was attacked in an alley and she stabbed the man. Almost killed him. But I finished the job, so the blood wasn’t on her hands. So she could still go to heaven. Sotheywouldn’t take her back to where they are from.”
“They?” Cole asked.
“Demons. Demons. Demons Demons…” Jeremy said the word faintly at first, then repeated it louder. “They want her. They want her light. But I protect her from them. That’s why I’m taking her, don’t you see? I’m taking her somewhere they can’t find her.”
Sweet Christ, he was truly mad. “Who are these demons?” Cole asked, gesturing to Rathbone to hurry. “Where are they? I’ll help you fight them.”
Jeremy’s face fell. He didn’t look young anymore.
A cloud crossed the moon, casting the night in pure shadow. Cole dropped his arms while simultaneously unsheathing his hidden blade. He worked to free it from its coil in his prosthesis, his fingers slow with mounting terror. He couldn’t see Jeremy any longer as the window had become a black void of shadow.
His eyes tracked where Imogen swayed limply in the white sheet; only a fall of red-gold hair and one delicately arched foot were visible. He’d never been a praying man, but as he carefully and quietly worked on freeing the knife, he prayed to every deity he’d ever heard of in his extensive travels. He bargained. He pleaded. And he vowed.
I would have your forgiveness,God, but I’d side with the devil to save her.
“We all have demons, don’t we, Your Grace?” The voice came from the window. It was no longer Jeremy. But someone else. Someone who resided inside of him, a construct of his diseased mind.
Cole knew there was no bargaining with this iteration. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he ordered, letting the fury seep into his voice. “Whoever you are, it’s not worth what I will do to you if any harm comes to her.”
“I am one ofthem,” the voice confirmed, disappointingly undaunted. “I don’t know which I find funnier, the fact that Jeremy thought he could hide her from me, or the fact that you think you can save her from me.” The evil laugh that rolled from the darkness twisted the knife in Cole’s gut.
She slipped farther down, before stopping with a jerk, her body swinging against the side of the house.
A raw growl escaped Cole, and he rushed forward.
“No you don’t,” the voice taunted, releasing her once more, and again catching her with a cruel yank.
Barely controlling the tempest inside of him, Cole again planted his feet. “What do you want?” he asked tightly, feeling at once helpless and homicidal.
“Iwantto decide what would be more fun. Making you watch her die like this, or pulling her back up and seeing if you can race up here before I crush her windpipe with my bare hands.”
Cole’s breath caught, his eyes swinging wildly to the clouds, to Rathbone, to his knife, and back to Imogen.
“You die tonight,” he vowed. “But I’ll give you one chance to go to the grave with your limbs attached. Let her go.Now. Or the consequences will be more painful than you can imagine.”
“Let her go, you say?” The clouds shifted, just enough…
“You choose.” Cole’s voice was hard. Violent. Almost as demonic as the man holding her hostage. “Release her, and you die quickly. Do anything else, and you die screaming.”
“Very well…” Jeremy’s voice turned serpentine. Almost gleeful. “You’ve talked me into it. I’ll release her.”
And he did.
Cole threw the blade with lethal precision as three things happened with perfect, simultaneous fluidity. Rathbone caught Imogen, rolling them both to the ground to minimize impact. O’Mara splintered open the door to the countess suite with a powerful kick. And Jeremy pitched forward out the window as the knife he’d not seen found purchase in his chest, before he landed in a broken twist of limbs.
Gasping her name, Cole sprang for Imogen, grappling her away from Rathbone and gathering her to his chest.
He checked her in the dark, running hands over her naked body, searching for bumps or breaks before tenderly pulling the sheet tighter around her.
“She didn’t fall far,” Rathbone confirmed. “He’d lowered her enough while taunting you for me to safely catch her.”
Then why wasn’t she moving?
