Page 14 of Dark Embrace

But the fine hairs that rose at her nape and the clammy fingers oozing across her skin made her certain that she had not imagined it, and that whoever—whatever—had cast the dark silhouette yet hovered, unseen, in thegloom.

Pressing her palm flat against her breastbone, she tried to will both her racing pulse and her galloping imagination under control. Either there was someone here or there wasn’t, and she meant to determine which it was. Squaring her shoulders, she went and lifted the mop from the bucket that stood in the corner. The handle would do as a weapon if needs must. Then she walked the perimeter of the room and found no onethere.

Still, she could not discount what she had seen. Someone had been in the ward and gone to great lengths to remainanonymous.

After returning the mop to its place, she went to Mr.Scully’sbed.

“Mr. Scully,” she whispered. “Mr. Scully, how do youthismorn?”

He lay quiet andstill.

But there wassomethingabout the way he was arranged in repose...something both macabre and familiar. His head lolled to one side, his arms hanging over the edges ofthebed.

Breathing too fast, she took a stepcloser.

A patient called out to her, but she did not so much as turn her head, for her entire focus was on the sight of Mr. Scully’s form, a lump beneath stained and frayed sheets. Not moving. Notbreathing.

The smell hit her, a heavy slap of urine andexcrement.

Dead. He was dead. Released fromhispain.

His eyes were closed. Sarah reached down and lifted his arm. His wrist was torn open, a jagged, gaping wound, the edges of skin and muscle shredded to reveal the whitish tendons of the long flexor muscles that stretched to hisfingers.

There was noblood.

Despite the torn edges of the hole at his wrist and the depth of the wound, there was not a single crimson drop upon the sheet or the floorbeneath.

For a moment, she could not breathe, could not think, and then she forced herself to lower his arm to the bed, to sharpen her attention, to determine exactly what it was that whispered to her to lookcloser.

Slowly, she walked all the way around the bed, aware that the patients on the ward were stirring, asking for water, for food, for a moment of comfort. Soon, someone else would hear the commotion, and they would come, theywouldsee...

What? They wouldseewhat?

The body of a man who had been destinedtodie?

Yes. But the manner of said death was both bizarre anddisturbing.

The fourth such death here at King’sCollege.

Sheshivered.

“Miss Lowell? Is aughtamiss?”

She heard the voice as though it came to her through a long, narrowtunnel.

Turning, she faced him, Killian Thayne, tall and broad and unsmiling. He stood close enough to touch, dressed all in black, like a shadow, his eyes hidden behind the dark glass of hisspectacles.

“He is dead,” she said, her tongue like leather in her mouth. “Mr. Scullyisdead.”

“An expected outcome.” He paused “Yet you are distressed by hispassing.”

“By themodeof his passing,” she said in a rush, then wondered that she could be sofoolish.

Someone, a man, had been here earlier. She had seen his shadow. A large shadow cast by atallman.

And here was Killian Thayne standing before her, broad and tall. Had he sat by Mr. Scully’s bed this morn just as he had sat by another patient’s bedside on a morning weeks past, another patient who had died with the same strange and inexplicablewounds?

“Let me see.” Mr. Thayne stepped around her and then around the bed to the far side. He stared at Mr. Scully’s sprawled form for a longmoment.