Page 19 of The Hunter
Praying for his survival, Millie didn’t breathe again until she heard her butler limping back down the hallway. “All clear, Miss Millie. Inn’t no one there. I checked every crack and cranny.”
Hesitantly, Millie unlocked the door and peeked into the dimly lit hallway, shaking more now than when she’d actually been in the clutches of the brute. She would have laughed at the sight of portly George in his nightshirt and hat, clutching the ancient rifle to his chest, if she wasn’t so shaken.
“Are you ’urt, Miss Millie?” he asked. “Is wee Jakub all right?”
“We’re fine, George,” she said, hating the tremor in her voice.
“Must’ve lit out the window. Though I can’t see ’ow he’d do it without breaking ’is legs.” The old man looked stymied.
“Best send for Scotland Yard, George,” Millie said, shutting the door and turning back to poor wide-eyed Jakub, gathering him into her arms again.
That’s it, tomorrow she was installing bars on all the windows, or she’d never sleep again.
CHAPTERFIVE
Please—don’t hurt my son.The words echoed through the cold, biting February rain as it whipped through the narrow streets of the East End. Argent couldn’t tell whose voice roared against the storm rolling down from the north. Millie LeCour’s? Or his mother’s?
Numbness stole the dexterity from his limbs, though whether the culprit was the freezing temperature or the pounding in his head, he couldn’t be certain. Suddenly he felt as though he’d run several leagues. His ribs tightened around his lungs, inhibiting his breath. His heart tossed itself against its cage, throbbing in his ears, through his muscles, and in the very marrow of his bones.
Was it truly so cold outside? Or could it be the startling contrast between the chill of the evening and the warmth of the flesh he’d had pressed against him only moments ago?
Trying to remember how long he’d been running, he plunged into darker streets, down the most dangerous alleys, with names like Cutthroat Corner or Hang Tree Row. He couldn’t seem to stop. If he stood still his skin might peel away from his body. And with nothing to shield his awareness, he might blow away in the storm.
Objectively, he’d always wondered if the black, cold void in his chest would expand to swallow him whole. Maybe that’s what he was running from. Evisceration. Oblivion.
For as long as he could remember. Since… since the night he’d been left alone in this world, he’d often felt as though he existedoutsideof his body. That he walked alongside himself, behind his own head, detached, apart, an emotionless observer to the blood he spilled. His body existed as an animated corpse, bone and vein, but bereft of a soul. Of whatever passion that made a being fundamentallyhuman.What caused them to sigh at a poem, or see themselves within a painting. Take offense at their neighbor or start a war out of greed.
He’d thought he lacked this intrinsic element.
He didn’t fear death. Didn’t appreciate life. He was fond of nothing and therefore didn’t fear pain or loss.
So why was he chasing his own body through the streets of predawn London? Why couldn’t he feel his skin? Or the breath in his lungs? Was this trembling a sign that his body was shutting down, or becoming more powerful?
Images transposed themselves over the stormy darkness. A lake of blood the size of a prison cell, growing larger with each lifeless body he tossed into it. Large, lovely marble-black eyes flickering with the last vestiges of life to roaring applause. A small boy, watching his mother die. What had he done? What had he left undone? What was the strategy for his next move?
Please—don’t hurt my son.
His chest tightened so abruptly, he gasped as his hand flew to cover it.
He needed tothink. He was too scattered, too caged. How a man could be both detached from his body and imprisoned by it was infuriating. He needed to center himself, needed release, and knew exactly where to find it.
Veering to the left, he crossed Limehouse Street and turned down what they called “Poplar Alley.” Not for the foliage, but for the small lodgings made of the poplar tree.
The smell of foreign spices, street vendors roasting strange delicacies on spits, penned animals, and raw sewage mixed with things better left to the shadows and fog.
Exotic food was not the only delicacy on display. Petite women with blue-black hair and robes of glimmering silk beckoned from white tents filled with sweet-smelling smoke and bodies limp from one excess or another. Opium, drink, food, sex, any of it was for sale here in the Asian markets, and Argent had tasted it all without developing a taste for any of it.
The markets and back alleys were clogged with too much humanity, even at this time of night, to maintain his jog. Though wherever he walked, people made room. Argent was a tall man in any place he found himself, but here in the Asian quarter, he stood out like a flame-haired beacon in a sea of darkness. Eyes followed him, but he didn’t meet them. Nor did he look down.
He’d always avoided looking directly into anyone’s eyes. He stared through them, or focused on the space between them. He imagined it was because life, itself, resided in the eyes. He’d learned that early on. And if he watched life drain away once, he’d watch it again. Every time he slept. Or sometimes tattooed on the back of his eyelids when he blinked.
The next gaze he met could belong to a potential victim. At first that thought had sickened him, and then it didn’t. It—drew him. Made him feel powerful. Like a god. As he grew older, he realized that the only time he felt alive was when he took a life.
And that came with its own dangers.
There was no shame in taking pleasure in a kill, but for some, it became an obsession, an addiction, and Argent didn’t want to give anything that power over him.
So he used other means with which to fill the void.
