Page 75 of The Business of Blood

After breaking a few bones, he pointed his pistol at anyone who should happen to venture too close, and luckily, the mob was now wary of stray bullets.

The crowd thinned at Great College Street, and the Hammer fell into step beside us. “They’ll herd the blighters back to the East End. We’ll press this way until we’re safe.”

“Who will herd them? The police?”

A laugh, rich as warm cream, was discordant in such chaos. “The police? You think those imbeciles could organize themselves against such a mob so quickly?” His hazel eyes danced at me. “No, darling, the Tsadeq Syndicate will restore order, here. The mob of unions and gangs must be reminded that the city is mine, after all.”

Even in my shaken state, his grandiosity amazed me.

“Butchers,” Aramis warned. “To your left.” He thrust me to his right and used his body as a shield.

Night Horse snatched one by the throat in mid-run, used his momentum to jerk the poor sod back, and snapped his neck with a good wrench on his necktie.

“That,”—he motioned to the broken man on the ground—“is why I don’t like cravats.”

Duly noted.

Pressing anxious fingers against my own still-healing throat, I looked away from the body in time to witness the upward arc of the curved blade clutched between the Hammer’s fingers. It caught the man running at him with his cudgel raised, right below the navel.

It only took a few swift, merciless jerks. Then the Hammer stepped back in time to avoid the brute’s innards splattering against his expensive shoes.

“The city ismine,” he informed the doomed assailant exactly as he had us only seconds prior. I don’t think the man marked the reminder. He was too busy gawking at his own guts.

He fell to his knees, and by the time his face hit the earth, life had deserted his eyes.

The Hammer spat on the ground next to him. “They won’t forget after today.”

Nola had been right yet again.

They would be washing organs from the pavestones.

17

As dazed as I found myself, I’d not failed to notice how expertly the Hammer had gutted his adversary. He’d opened the stomach cavity with that short, curved blade, without perforating the intestines.

So far as I could distinguish, anyway.

As Aidan had pointed out, the act took a certain kind of knowledge. Talent.

Practice.

Could he have done Frank Sawyer thus, and so quickly?

I remained shielded by Night Horse’s shoulders long after it was necessary. Partly because I didn’t trust my legs. And partly because I felt he understood the animal I had become. He understood it better than I did. He was someone with the morality of a wolf, or a fox, or an owl.

He was someone with claws. Blades.

He didn’t wear much for such a chilly, rainy day, I dimly realized. Trousers, boots, and a vest with no shirt beneath it.

I wondered where his jacket was before he settled it around my shoulders.

I clung to his umber arms, taking comfort in the strength I found there.

I couldn’t tell you how long we walked or how many turns we took. Only when I was unable to clearly read the street signs did I realize I’d lost my spectacles somewhere in the fracas.

We eventually ducked beneath a doorway arched into a stone garden wall, where I was allowed to catch my breath.

“Are you hurt?” Aramis removed his jacket from around my shoulders and performed a cursory physical examination that, on any other day, would have left me feeling more than a little molested.