Page 44 of Molly Boys

“Hmm.” Stanley sighed. “Poor Charlie, such a sweet boy…” he slurred further. “So kind, and David…” he sighed again. “David… his beautiful mouth.” Stanley’s head dropped forward limply.

This time Archie caught his face in both hands, cupped his cheeks, and lifted his head, giving it a little shake until Stanley opened his eyes again.

“Where’m I?” he mumbled.

“Bethnal Green. you’re at The Lotus Flower,” Archie told him.

“I need to get home.”

“Where do you live?” Archie asked, still holding his face.

“Twenty-four Bed–” Archie gave his face another little shake as his eyes closed. “Bedford Square.”

“Bloomsbury?” Archie questioned.

“Um-hm.” Stanley hummed as his eyes began to droop again.

Damn it, there was no way he would be able to get himself home in this state, and Archie’s conscience wouldn’t allow him to walk away, not with the horror of Charles Wakefield’s and David Perkins’ corpses still fresh in his mind. Victims, it seemed, that Lord Stanley knew.

“Eddy,” a woman nearby purred and then laughed raucously, drawing Archie’s attention.

He looked up and as the woman shifted, his eyes landed on a young man who fit Prince Victor’s description.

Glancing back at the nearly unconscious lord, Archie shook him again.

“Lord Stanley? I need you to stay here. I’ll be back shortly.”

Stanley shoved Archie’s hands away from his face.

“Need to get home,” he muttered.

“No.” Archie reached for him again. “Stay here, please?”

But his eyes were once again closing. Leaving him propped up on the sofa, Archie pushed himself to his feet and headed in the direction of the young man named Eddy and his giggling companion. Archie had almost reached them when he glanced back where he’d left Lord Stanley and his stomach clenched sharply.

The sofa was empty.

His eyes quickly skimmed the room and caught sight of the man staggering toward the stairs at the far side of the room while he clumsily tried to pull his heavy coat on.

Archie’s eyes darted to Eddy, the one man he needed to speak to before the Home Office found him first, but every instinct in Archie’s body told him not to let Lord Stanley out of his sight.

He swore under his breath and, with a growl of frustration, he hurried across the room to the staircase leading up to the red door.

For someone so clearly intoxicated, Lord Stanley certainly was fast, Archie thought to himself as he burst out of the red door and into the heavily shrouded night. The man was nowhere to be seen as another bank of fog rolled across the cobbles in front of Archie.

His whole body went cold. Everything in his gut screamed at him to find the blonde man. He couldn’t say why, he just knew he had to or something bad would happen.

Praying he was headed in the right direction, Archie ran, his boots slipping on the thin layer of slush and snow smeared over the cobbles.

“Lord Stanley?” he called out into the mist. “Lord Stanley?”

His heart pounded. Something was wrong, so very wrong. A sense of urgency gripped him by the throat and seized his lungs. His panic was a living, breathing thing as he skidded to a halt and turned circles in the fog.

He had to be somewhere, he couldn’t have got very far this quickly. Archie’s panting was the only sound on the quiet street. Trying to calm his breathing, he listened, straining to hear even the slightest sound.

Suddenly he heard a muffled cry and the scuffle of boots against the cobbles. Instinct guided him and he followed the faint noise. The fog shifted to reveal the entrance to an alley and just beyond it, spotlighted in the streetlight’s pale light, was the most monstrous sight he’d ever seen.

The man was a giant, huge just like the boy had described him, and while it may have been a trick of the light, his eyes glowed in the darkness.