“Dammit, someone speak up,” he ordered, sweeping closer.
Cook, a thin woman, despite the elegant richness of her fare, noticed Imogen and put up a hand. “No, my lady, don’t come any closer!” she warned. “You’ll not want to see this.”
Trenwyth shouldered past them, paying no heed to his wound. Imogen skirted him, noting the way his lips thinned and skin tightened.
“What?” she queried anxiously. “What is it?”
“Imogen, don’t—” he began, throwing an arm out to catch her.
But he was too late. She glimpsed what was perhaps the most gruesome thing she’d seen that day.
There, on the stoop, neck wrapped with the ghastly familiar neckerchief—the one she’d stained with blood when she’d stabbed Mr. Barton—was the body of a tiny, strangled kitten.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sir Carlton Morley stood at the head of neat rows of dead bodies in the morgue like the professor of a particularly macabre classroom. Hands clasped just a little too tightly behind him. Eyes narrowed in deep, almost painful consideration.
Today, London was a city of tears.
Twenty people had been killed in the iron strikes, one of his own constables among them. Dozens of injured overwhelmed area doctors and hospitals. And then … there was the inevitable chaos that accompanied a citywide incident of this magnitude. Looters and thieves took advantage of an absent police force in other parts of the city. Women had been assaulted. Offices and shops overrun.
Five of these bodies—some laid out on discarded wood pallets as they’d run out of tables—were victims of the Duke of Trenwyth’s considerable wrath.
And who could blame him?
Lady Anstruther’s property had been invaded, and Trenwyth had seen fit to take justice into his own hands. There’d been no one else. It was time to face the facts; Scotland Yard was miserably inundated and underfunded.
Something more had to be done. Something drastic and effective. Perhaps it was time to stop trusting in the infinitely slow-turning cogs of the justice system.
His nose twitched at the mingling odors of astringent, preservatives, gas lamps, and so much death. Above this room, the clamor of loved ones waiting to identify their dead, of constables and coppers doing their best to keep the peace, and sundry other souls in need of justice awaited his appearance.
It wasn’t that he hid down here, in this concrete purgatory where the dead only spent a short time, he’d merely come here to think. He’d come here to plan. Often, the departed made better company than the living. They were certainly quieter.
Morley checked his watch, and surveyed the dead with a demeanor anyone would have identified as dispassionate.
Little did they know.
As a soldier, he had created a comparable number of corpses with his own rifle. Each felled with a vital shot. The lungs, the brain, or the heart were all organs of affect that, once pierced, became utterly useless. Both literally and figuratively.
His heart had been broken too many times to count, and there were times he feared it ceased to beat. But his lungs and body were strong. His mind sharp. And those could be used in tandem to make a most effective weapon. A weapon that could be wielded in times like this, against men who incited violence. Against those who oppressed the people. And anyone who would prey upon the innocent.
Something had to be done …
What he needed was a strategy. What he needed was an army.
Morley didn’t have to look back as the men he’d been expecting filtered through the door one by one. He identified them each by their stride, by their particular scents, and by the indefinable energy he’d trained himself to recognize. As a child, he’d learned to read people, to see things that no one else saw, to observe a shift in nature, expression, or intent. As a man, he’d used that skill to be aware of those in his immediate vicinity, as he observed the rest of the world at a distance over the barrel of a long-range rifle.
Trenwyth entered first, as he was used to doing so by nature of his rank. His long stride remained unmatched by any man Morley had yet to meet, though he prowled with the light step of a spy. The duke was a particularly lethal combination of paradoxes. Patient and volatile. Principled and vicious. A nobleman, but by no means a gentleman.
To Morley, he was a wolf. The feral ancestor of man’s closest companion. A creature that often seemed most approachable, trustworthy even, but who would think nothing of ripping your throat out for the sheer pleasure of it.
As evidenced by the corpses they’d retrieved from the Anstruther mansion.
Dorian Blackwell followed Trenwyth, his expensive shoes producing an arrogant staccato on the spare floor. He was a man who hid from no one. His power evident. His name legendary. He could meld with the shadows, when necessary, but his style had always been rather elaborate. He was a man who understood both the physical and psychological benefits of warfare and terror, and had used them to his distinct advantage his entire life.
To Morley, he was a panther. Ebony-haired and black-eyed, ruling from his lofty perch, from which he only descended when the prey was ripe enough to strike his fancy.
Christopher Argent made no noise as he followed his former employer into the domain of his current one. Like Trenwyth, he stepped with the economy of movement needed to avoid detection, though Morley always noted his presence as a rather sinister black void. To have his back turned to Argent felt a little like he imagined it would when death came to call. The kiss of a chill vibrating the hair on his body to attention the moment before the scythe fell.
To Morley, Argent was a viper. The red of his hair a warning that one strike would mean death. The cold, reptilian gaze, the deceptively relaxed coil of his muscle, and the shocking speed of his exotic combat training marked him a most efficient killer.
Liam Mackenzie, the last of their clandestine gathering, shut the door behind him, his heavy steps muffled by boots made of the softest stag hide. Warriors like him just didn’t exist in this age of elegance and industry. He possessed little to none of the shadowy grace and superlative wit of his companions. He spoke his mind, revealed his emotions, and ate the heart of any that dared oppose him, after he ripped it from their chests with his freakishly large bare hands. He was the descendant of the fierce Picts who became rebel Jacobites, his blood fortified with that of long-ago Viking invaders.
To Morley he was a bear of a man, the kind hunted to extinction on this island ages ago. A gentle beast to his family, but a ferocious, unstoppable alpha predator with a vengeful streak as long as Hadrian’s Wall.
These men were all brutally efficient predators. Most of them nocturnal in nature. And recently he’d joined their ranks. Or, rather, he was about to ask them to join his.
Morley wondered where he fit in this pantheon of predators. A bird of prey, perhaps. An eagle-eyed raptor who kept watch on his city from the rooftops, and used his unnaturally honed senses to swoop upon his prey with brisk efficiency. He was neither as large as Ravencroft, as skilled as Argent, as feared and connected as Blackwell, nor did he wield as much physical and social power as Trenwyth.
However, he had a little of all of these traits. And he possessed something he was convinced many of these men did not.
A conscience. Or, more aptly, a purpose. He’d once been one of the nameless, innumerable criminal siphons on the city, and now he’d been dubbed her protector.