Page 3 of What Angels Fear

The metal of the pistol’s trigger felt cold and solid against Sebastian’s finger, the wind-swirled mist damp against his cheeks. He forced himself to focus on this moment, this place. The lark called again, from nearer the base of the hill. He could hear the gurgle of a distant stream, the clip-clop of a horse, ridden at a slow trot up the road.

“... ten, eleven...”

It was the hesitation in the other man’s stride between the tenth and eleventh count that warned him. That, and the whisper of cloth rubbing against cloth as Talbot turned.

“... twelve—”

Sebastian spun about and dropped into a crouch at the precise moment that John Talbot fired, so that the bullet intended for Sebastian’s heart grazed his forehead instead. Then, gun empty and dangling slack in his hand, Talbot had no choice but to stand, body turned sideways, jaw clenched tight, nostrils flaring with each indrawn breath as he waited for Sebastian’s shot.

Calmly, purposefully, Sebastian raised his pistol, took aim, and fired. Captain Talbot let out a sharp cry and pitched forward.

The doctor scrambled out of the gig and ran toward him.

“Bloody hell, Sebastian,” said Christopher. “You’ve killed him.”

“Hardly.” Sebastian let the pistol fall to his side. “But I imagine he’ll find it damned uncomfortable to sit down for a while.”

“I say, I say, I say,” blustered Talbot’s second, his mustache working back and forth. “Most ungentlemanly conduct, this. Englishmen stand and fire weapons from their feet. Someone ought to fetch the constables. There’ll be murder charges brought for this, mark my words.”

“Be quiet, man,” said the doctor, snapping open his case. “No one I’ve treated yet has died from being clipped across the arse.”

Sir Christopher began to laugh, while Sebastian stretched to his feet and walked across the field to collect the other pistol. He’d promised Melanie he wouldn’t kill her husband.

But she hadn’t said anything about not making the bastard suffer.

Chapter 2

It was in the retrochoir that Jem first noticed the blood.

He’d known something was wrong before that, of course—known it as soon as he opened the north transept door. For thirty years now Jem Cummings had been sexton here at St. Matthew of the Fields. It was part of his job to see that the church was locked up tight every night and unlocked again the next morning.

So Jem knew.

They had a young rector what’d taken over the living three years ago—the Reverend McDermott, he was. McDermott hadn’t liked the idea of keeping the church locked at night. But then Jem had told him about that time back in ’92, when them bloodthirsty heathen Frogs had been rampaging across the Channel and the old reverend had come in one morning to find the high altar smashed and pigs’ blood splattered across the choir walls. When he heard about that, Reverend McDermott dropped his talk about leaving the church open real quick.

It was the pigs’ blood that Jem was remembering now as he staggered toward the nave, his bum leg hurting bad in the damp cold, his eyes straining as he peered into the early morning gloom. Yet the peace of the church seemed undisturbed, the high altar pristine and untouched, the sacristy door protecting the church’s precious, consecrated vessels solid and locked. The pounding of Jem’s heart began to ease.

Then he saw the blood.

He didn’t know what it was at first. Only dark smudges, faint but growing more distinct, more discernibly in the shape of men’s shoe prints as he traced the trail across the worn paving slabs toward the Lady Chapel. The cold of the ancient stone walls seemed to seep into his very bones, his breath coming ragged in his tight chest as he crept forward, his body shaking so badly he had to clench his teeth to keep them from rattling.

She lay on her back, sprawled in an obscene posture against the polished marble steps that led up to the chapel’s altar. He saw bare thighs, spread wide and gleaming white in the lamplight. A froth of lace edged what had once been a fine satin flounce, torn now, and stained with the same darkness that smeared her thighs. Eyes wide and glassy stared at him from beneath a head of golden curls tipped back at an unnatural angle. At first he thought the front of her gown was black, but as he inched closer, he saw the gaping gashes across her throat and he understood. He understood, too, where all the blood had come from. It was everywhere, the blood, worse even than that long-ago day when the Jacobin fanatic had thrown buckets of the stuff around the choir. Only, this wasn’t pigs’ blood. It was her blood.

Jem stumbled backward, his elbow knocking painfully against the edge of the Lady Chapel’s intricately carved stone screen as he squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out that horrific vision.

But nothing would ever blot out that smell, the cloying, sickening mingling of blood and candle wax and raw, sexual fulfillment.

Chapter 3

It was almost noon by now, but the light filtering down through the stained-glass windows in the apse of St. Matthew of the Fields was still feeble, diffuse.

Sir Henry Lovejoy, chief magistrate for Westminster at Queen Square, let his gaze travel over the blood-splattered chapel walls, the thick pools of congealing gore standing out dark and cruel against the white marble of the altar steps. He had a theory, that the incidence of crimes of violence and passion was higher on those days when the yellow fog held London in its choking, deadly grip.

But it had been a long time since London had seen a crime like this one.

To one side of the Lady Chapel, a small, ominously still form lay hidden beneath a cloth stained dark and stiff with so much blood that Lovejoy had to force himself to walk over to it. Bending, he flipped back the edge of the fabric, and sighed.

She’d been pretty, once, this woman. And young. Any untimely death was tragic, of course. But no man who’d ever loved a woman, or watched with pride and fear the tentative first steps of a child, could look upon that youthful loveliness and not experience an added weight of sorrow, an extra edge to his sense of outrage.

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