Page 71 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Léon’s eyes flared. “Why would I do that?”
“Just a feeling. A feeling you’ve got your money and your papers in there, and you’re ready to leave town. But you won’t get away that easy. Not until you fulfil your end of the bargain.”
Mollard’s hand ripped at his coat, and Léon tore them away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Give me it. You’re not leaving—not tonight or ever. From this day forward, you belong to me.”
A simmering rage that had been building in Léon all his life finally spilled over. His fist shot out and caught Mollard on the chin. Mollard lunged for him, but he snapped fingers closed on Mollard’s throat and he squeezed. He felt the windpipe crush closed beneath his strong hand, and Mollard’s eyes grew wide in shocked fright.
He knew what was happening, of course he did, and it struck a blow at Léon’s easy humanity—his belief in justice, his gold-coated system of ethics that allowed him to do what he needed to do to survive. He killed the condemned, he stuck to the letter of the law, he eased the blow, delivered them gently to their fate.
Not anymore. Not since he lost Émile. Not since he tasted Henry. Not since he found something worth fighting for.
The tension moved from his wrist to his biceps, and he slammed Mollard’s head back against the table. Mollard kicked at him, pulled his wrist with one hand, groped about with the other, scrunching at Léon’s coat, slapping along the rough wood. Léon’s voice, his grunts of effort, of desperation, sounded hollow and too-loud in the empty room, the stark walls echoing back the breaths and the voice and laying bare the act of murder.
He knew with every fibre of his being exactly what he was doing. He knew as Mollard’s face turned pink, then red, then purple, as his yellowy eyes bulged gelatinous and gruesome, as his tongue pushed out between his teeth, just as Mollard knew.
In a last-ditch attempt to save his small and scratching life, Mollard grasped the wine bottle and aimed for Léon’s head. A glint of firelight on glass wrenched Léon’s neck back just in time, the bottle cracking down on his shoulder, slipping from Mollard’s hand, and dropping to the floor in a shatter of shards, a dizzy array of glimmering mirrors shining back his final moments.
All but the base broke apart, leaving one round reminder of a bottle decorated with a dozen deadly spikes. Léon saw it. He saw it, and he wanted it over, fast, just like taking a head would have been.
He wrenched Mollard up by his throat, and Mollard grasped at his wrist, with no understanding of his intention, or he might have braced himself. As it was, it was only too simple for Léon to kick a leg to the right, slip one foot from beneath the man, and slam him to the floor, back first, head crashing down on the sharp shards of the broken bottle.
They punctured his skull easily and deeply.
And Mollard was dead.
Just like that.
Léon took a step back from the twitching body, horrified by what he’d done. Frenzied, he shoved hands into his pockets, made sure all his money, the papers DuPont had given him in good faith, his identification, all of it was there.
He snatched the Witches’ Tower keys up off the floor, then he reached into Mollard’s coat pocket and stole the rest of the prison keys.
He looked down at the vile man one last time, eyes gaping, still, and slowly decomposing on the floor of his small and damp house, just as repulsive in death as he had been in life.
Then Léon left him there to rot.
35
IN THE WITCHES’ TOWER
Henry was being kept high on the third level of the Witches’ Tower, desperately alone, isolated, feared by the people of the city.
It was around two o’clock in the morning when Léon unlocked the outer door and slipped inside unseen. But when the cold air wrapped around him like skeletons’ fingers, regret and the black night cut him to the quick.
The building was terrifying. The walls seemed to hold all the sadness and terror of its former captives, only with a century of moss and damp and birds nesting and rats infesting and all the loneliness of a forbidding fortress designed to house the darkest souls.
With a gut-churning creak, Léon set his foot on the first of many stairs to ascend the tower.
He’d had days to worry over what Henry thought of him—to dwell on that last look he’d given him when he said he should burn.
Could he really have believed Léon meant it? Why on earth not? But for one sweet and soft moment, that one world-altering kiss, Léon had never given Henry a reason to think he adored him the way he did. Henry must believe Léon hated him. Andhow racked with fear and horror and hatred must he have been these many days and frigid nights…
Léon carried a sweater in his hand, the thickest he owned, horrified at the thought of how he might find Henry. Frozen to death? Sick and trembling?
He needed to get him out, and fast. They would be coming early to burn Henry. And when Mollard didn't arrive with the keys, they would search for him.
Yet despite the urgency, when Léon finally reached the third floor landing, he hovered on the threshold, unsure how to face Henry. How to explain it all… But the late hour pushed him on.
