Page 24 of Dark Embrace
Trembling, she clenched her teeth to keep them from clacking aloud. If she dared cry for help, she might bring down a dozen worse creatures onherhead.
Taking a step backward, and another, she pressed against the wood of the cart, her legs shaking so hard, she knew not how they yet bore herweight.
Run,her mind screamed, and she dared a rapid glance in each direction. To her right was a courtyard, to her left, anotheralley.
The man before her took a single step forward, menacing. Terrifying. He was done toying with her. He was coming for her, as she had always known hewould.
Still clutching her cudgel, she snaked her free hand behind her back and groped for the wooden cart. It was high-wheeled, and she could feel the lower limit of it at a level with herwaist.
There was her bestchoice.
She dropped to the ground and rolled beneaththecart.
Her pursuer made a sound of surprise. For the briefest instant, she wasn’t certain if it was a hiss, or her name—Ssssarah—but she did not pause to look behind her. Bounding to her feet as soon as she reached the opposite side of the cart, she grabbed her skirt with her free hand and hauled it up, then ran as fast as she could, her legs pumping, her breath rasping in herthroat.
The cobbles were caked with years of grime and refuse, and her feet skidded and slipped on the sludge. Once, she slammed her shoulder against a wall, nearly falling, but she pushed herself upright and ran on, weaving through the alleys, taking any turn she recognized, not daring to take those that were less thanfamiliar.
The only thing worse than being chased through this warren would be running blindly without having a clear concept of herlocation.
Twice, she dared look behind her. She saw nothing to make her think she had beenfollowed.
Finally, she ducked into a shadowed niche beneath a narrow wooden stairwell. Her lungs screamed for air, and she huddled as deep in the gloom as she could, pulling her body in tight to make herself as small as possible. Her ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps pounding in pursuit, but there wasnothing.
From the window above her came the discordant noise of an argument, a man’s voice, then another, deeper voice in reply, and a moment later, the dull thud of fists on flesh and a cryofpain.
Panting, she struggled to satisfy her desperate need for air and will her galloping pulse to a moresedatepace.
She waited a moment longer then crept from her hiding place. Staying close to the wall and the sheltering gloom, she made her way clear of the labyrinth of alleys to New Oxford Street. There she crossed and then continued north to the small lodging house where she rented her room from Mrs.Cowden.
She strode along the street toward the narrow house hemmed in on both sides by other narrow houses. Almost had she reached the place when she drew up short and stumbled to a dead stop. Fear lodged in her throat like a fishbone. Just ahead, a man lounged against the light post severalhousesaway.
A tall man, garbed in a long, darkcloak.
The wind caught the cloak and made it billow like a sail. Sarah stood rooted to the spot, uncertain whether to run for the door of her lodging house or flee down the emptystreet.
He stood on the far side of the lamp-post his face obscured. Then he shifted, and the light from the lamp spilled down, glinting off the metal rims of his spectacles and highlighting the sun bright hair that framed hisangularface.
10
Barcelona,Spain,1585
The inquisitor’schamber had walls of stone with two barred windows set close to the high ceiling. Darkened hallways branched off the main room like the legs of a spider. Killian stayed close to Layla’s side. She trembled, from fear or cold or anticipation he couldnotsay.
He almost turned back, almost drew her from this place of pain and torment, but he stifled the inclination and drew her forward instead. He refused to carry out the task he had set himself without her full and clear consent. He had brought her here so she could see the truth of what he was, what she wouldbecome.
He had met her by happenstance, a dying woman who desperately wanted to live. She was the sister of a man with whom he carried out business. He did not love her—was one such as he even capable of love?—and she did not love him. Theirs was a friendship of mutual respect and companionship. She was intelligent and shrewd, and their conversation was amusing. After months of watching her slowly fade away, he had told her he could offer a cure, he could saveherlife.
The offer was made not only for her sake but for his. He was weary of his solitude. The lovers he had taken over the years had been fleeting distractions, women who were well aware that he would never be a permanent fixture in their lives. He had told none what he was, shared little of himself with any of them. But Layla was not a bedmate. She was a friend, and he thought that was a good basis for the solution he offered: a way to cheat her rapidly approachingdeath.
He had shared few details, had only warned that she would have to do things that were both distasteful and against her nature in order tosurvive.
“I do not care,” she had said, her dark eyes flashing in her pale face. “I want to live, whatever the cost, I want to live.” She had paused. “Do you do those distastefulthings?”
“I do. Do not misunderstand. I do not revile what I have become.” What his mother’s murderer had made him. “It simplyis. And because of it, I have had opportunities to travel, to study, to see wonders others can only imagine. Pyramids. Tigers. Monkeys in a jungle thick and green. Rome, Venice, Paris,London…”
And always he moved on after a few short years, never offering the chance for any to notice that he never aged, never grew ill. Never allowing himself the opportunity for friendships or connections of much length or depth. It was a lonely existence, one he had lived for over two centuries. In his human life, he had enjoyed interludes of quiet and equal interludes of camaraderie. But he was no longer human, and whatever interactions he shared with mortals could never be enough to breach the walls between them for he was the hunter and they werehisprey.
In the beginning, there had been occasions when he had considered walking into the sun. But he had not, for his yearning to live, to learn, to feed off experiences, and yes, to help mankind and atone in some tiny way for the lives he stole had outweighed his melancholy. The plague that had killed his family—that he had brought to his family—had sparked in him a need to understand disease and death, to bring ease to the suffering of others, to find cures where he could. So he studied texts and healed those he could; those he could not heal, those who were already wrapped in death’s embrace but had yet to draw their last breath, hedrained.