Page 44 of The Hunter
“I promise.”
Millie’s dressing room was visible from backstage, and Argent followed the boy to it, amused at how the child walked with his knees together.
The dressing room seemed less brilliant and filled with more useless clutter without Millie there. Argent swept through the room and checked every corner and hiding place before he returned to the door to allow Jakub some privacy.
The boy hurried, as he’d promised, but dawdled at his painting corner.
“Come on then.” Argent gestured to the door.
“I just have to take something with me.” Jakub bent to retrieve two boxes and a long brush. “These are too valuable to be left—” A sound of terror escaped the child, just as a slow creak of the door closing behind Argent ripped a chill through his already taut muscles. He whirled to see the gleam of muddy eyes he’d thought never to encounter again.
“It’s the fifth act, Argent,” said Charles Dorshaw as he oozed from the shadows of the doorway. “Desdemona is in the middle of being murdered.”
“I should have known you were back,” Argent muttered as he sized up the pale assassin with the mischievous eyes and the sharp throwing knife brandished at the ready. “The blood in the streets, the tortured, degraded women.”
The man across from him maintained an expert grip on his knife as he gave a relaxed chuckle. “Some of usenjoyour work. We can’t all be cold fish like you.” He licked thin, refined lips. “Though we can savor the bodies… when they’ve gone cold.”
Ladies fanned themselves over Charles Dorshaw’s lean, handsome elegance. They posed seductively and dropped their handkerchiefs for him. They angled for introductions and indelicacies. What they didn’t know was that catching his attentions was worse than drawing the notice of hell.
Demons had a shorter attention span and weaker stomachs, and there was a chance even the denizens of hell liked their women to be warm and alive when they bedded them.
Dorshaw didn’t.
“America and I failed to suit, I’m afraid. It posed no challenge for me.” Much like a cobra, he used his hypnotic eyes, melodic voice, and impeccable manners to disarm his prey. “So much of it is still as good as lawless, and the women are all loud, opinionated, uncultured swine, or worse, religious fanatics. The men all wear pistols on their hips, and business is slow as those industrious upstarts all seem to do their own killing.” Dark hair and soft, thin eyebrows lent an almost androgynous symmetry to Dorshaw’s wicked good looks as he made a dismissive gesture in his starched evening attire. “Indeed, London is my home, Argent, and her streets have always been big enough for the both of us, wouldn’t you agree?”
“As you say.” Argent nodded once. “But this room isn’t, so get the fuck out.”
Dorshaw tsked and motioned with his chin to the child blocked by Argent’s body. “Can’t do that, old boy. The contract on these two has been… renegotiated. You failed to deliver, and it’s back on the open market.”
“Not as of this evening,” Argent informed him. “Blackwell’s pulled it. The LeCours belong to me.”
Dorshaw shook his head. “There must be some dreadful misunderstanding. I didn’t get this contract from Blackwell. In fact, he and I have never particularly got on. You see, this client has employed me before, and I should be very loath to disappoint.” He thumbed the razor edge of the dagger for which Dorshaw had become infamous. “I’ll leave the child alive, if that’s any comfort to you. I merely have todeliverhim.”
A gasp and a whimper sounded from behind them and Argent did his best to shut it out. If he could reach for his garrote, or his own knife, he could bloody Dorshaw’s throat before he took his next breath. But something about the tiny rattle of whimpers behind him stayed his hand.
“Listen carefully, Dorshaw,” Argent said, nonplussed by the difficulty he had in maintaining his monotone. “I have claimed the woman and the boy. They are under my indefinite protection. You leave now, and you leave themalone… and I’ll let you escape with your life.”
Dorshaw threw him a look of regret that had little to no sincerity in it. “Icouldhave done, Argent. The money is good, but not the best. I could have let you have her; I could have let her go, if I hadn’t seen her first.” His face turned rapturous, and Argent knew in that moment Dorshaw was going to die.
By his hand.
But that throwing knife in Dorshaw’s hand was poised to fly, and Argent had to take care of it before he made his move. He inched to his right slightly, to be sure his body blocked that of the child.
“It isn’t often men like us get a mark filled with such an overabundance of life as Millie LeCour…” Dorshaw showed even, white teeth in a wolfish grin. “It will take extra time for me to drain her of it.”
“Don’t you fucking say her name.” The red returned, and Dorshaw must have recognized it in his eyes, because his smile died, and with a masterful flick of his wrist, his knife flew right at Argent’s throat and was followed by a deft lunge, charging to take him down if the knife failed to do so.
With reflexes honed to that of a viper’s, Argent reached his right arm across his body and slapped the knife out of the air with his open palm, changing its trajectory to embed into the wall to his left. That put his elbow in the perfect place to solve the problem of Dorshaw’s advancement.
A sharp lunge forward connected his elbow with the man’s eye socket. But his colleague was no stranger to a strike in the face.
Dorshaw absorbed much of the force of the strike by spinning away from it, and coming full circle to face Argent with a larger, sharper knife in the same hand. The flash gave little warning before a burning pain ripped through the meat beneath Argent’s forearm.
Gritting his teeth, Argent cut Dorshaw’s victorious smile short by stomping out at his chest, the force of the blow lifting the smaller man off his feet and throwing him against the door. It was a testament to Edward Middleton Barry’s architectural brilliance that the door remained intact.
In the time it took for Argent to retrieve the knife from the wall, Dorshaw had nearly recovered, and they brandished their blades at each other with absolute absorption.
“We should have done this in the ring, Argent.” Dorshaw sneered. “Imagine the money we would have made, the best slashers in the empire, hand to hand, as it were.”
