Page 4 of Heart of Iron
Blade struggled to his feet, his eyes glassy with pain.
“You have to hold on,” Will warned, bending and easing the other man over his shoulder.“I’m goin’ to get you home.To Honoria.She’ll know what to do.Just you hold on.”
***
Honoria eased the blankets higher and then turned the knob on the gas lamp lower.Light muted, casting a variety of shadows across the room as Blade slept.Will paced in front of the fire, his wrist tingling as the skin healed.
Honoria washed her hands, moving away from the bed.Her face was composed, but deep shadows lingered in the hollows beneath her reddened eyes.As she turned, the light caught her profile and for a moment Will stopped breathing, seeing another’s face in the shadows.Then she looked up, arching a brow at him and the image was gone.She shared the same dark eyes and rich mahogany hair as her sister, but Lena’s face was prettier and she was a good inch or two shorter than Honoria.
Just the ghost of her image lingered, haunting him.
A quick jerk of the head meant Honoria wanted to talk to him.Outside.
Shooting Blade one last look, he strode to the door.An old shirt of Blade’s hung loosely over his chest.He couldn’t quite button it, and the sleeves stretched taut over his arms.Foolishness.But he wasn’t knocking on Rip’s door—Blade’s other lieutenant—and asking for a shirt that might have a better chance at fitting him.
Honoria eased the door closed.“I think he’ll be fine.The bleeding’s stopped and I’ll get some more blood into him.Thank you for bringing him home to me.”
Will nodded.He never had much to say to her.They’d tried, after she first married Blade, to find some common ground between them.But he knew what she thought of him—had overheard it in quite explicit detail the night before he moved out of the warren.
Dangerous.
Unpredictable.
Athreattohersister.
Sometimes he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t been half right.
Her gaze dropped to his wrist.“Do you need tending—?”
“It’ll heal.”
“Something to eat then?There’s stew…in the kitchen.I’ll just—”
“Ain’t hungry.”He nodded his leave of her, then turned on his heel.The back of his neck was itching.
“Will.Please.”
He stopped moving and glanced back over his shoulder.
“You know you can come home now.It breaks his heart that you’re living on your own.And you know…she’s not here anymore either.”
Honoria would never understand.He shook his head.“She weren’t the reason I left,” he growled.Nottheonlyoneanyway.
Then he turned and stalked out into the darkness, feeling her eyes on his back the entire way.
***
No point going home.
Will stared at the fire in the distance, still raging out of control.Something bothered him about the attack.The mysterious device.The flamethrower.The silver knife.Those men had been prepared to face a blue blood and incapacitate them.
He breathed deeply through his nose.It was hard to pick up a scent trail with the overwhelming cling of ash in the air but not impossible.Moving east, he loped across the rooftops, his unease growing as the men circled back toward the north.Toward Whitechapel.
Just before the wall that circled the rookery, they dropped off the rooftops and disappeared into an alley.Will knew the area well.It was a dead end.
He followed them in and stared at the brick wall at the back of it.The ripe scents of the rookery spilled over into the surrounding streets.He wrinkled up his nose and looked around.There was a grate in the cobbles, but surely they wouldn’t have gone down.That led to the sewers and from there into the notorious sprawl of Undertown.Weren’t nothing living there now, only ghosts and whispers.People had tried to move back in once the vampire that had slaughtered its residents was killed, but something drove them back out.
If they came back at all.
