“How are you holding her secure?” he asked, fighting to control his voice as terror threatened to steal it from him.
The man’s disarmingly young face split into a sneer. “You work the docks long enough, you learn a bit ’bout leverage, don’t ya? Though I doubt a toff like you done an honest day’s work in his bloody life.”
Cole let the taunt go. “Have you harmed her?”
To his astonishment, Jeremy let out a harsh bark of laughter. “That’s bloody rich, coming from you.” He sneered down at him, his lip curled in disgust. “She was pure as an angel before she met you, before you turned her into a whore.”
Cole was well aware of that, and shame needled in beneath his rage and panic. They both loved her. It was something he could use. “Why isn’t she moving, Carson? Are you certain she’s alive?”
The villain made a derisive noise. “Just dosed her with a bit of chloroform I bribed off of that bitch nurse, Molly, at St. Margaret’s before I did her in.”
It was difficult to process all the information that sentence contained while simultaneously swallowing the bile churned into his throat by the brick of fear that landed in his belly.
Chloroform was a powerful anesthetic, when used properly. He’d employed it himself, in his tenure as a spy. But in large doses, it would be lethal, especially when mixed with alcohol.
“You murdered Lady Broadmore, and the others.” Another bit of knowledge permeated his fear.
Roman Rathbone slid from the garden door, remaining concealed beneath the balcony. He’d removed his shirt and shoes, and was clad in only a pair of dark trousers, shadows, and skin the color of carob.
If Cole could keep Jeremy talking, Rathbone might have a chance to position himself beneath Imogen’s body without the madman noticing.
“I did it to save Ginny’s life,” Jeremy said. “They wanted her, wanted to take her, to watch her suffer, but I wouldn’t let them. I gave them substitutes and kept them fed. Flora first, the cheeky whore. That washerwoman in her building. The nanny and the nurse. I didn’t want to, you see. But they made me. They were hungry for it.”
“Who are they?” Cole asked evenly.
“They. Them.” Jeremy hit his temple with his palm repeatedly. “They. They. They.” He chanted in time to the strikes.
Cole took an involuntary step forward as the vulnerable bundle that was Imogen swayed precariously now that she wasn’t stabilized by both hands.
“I said stay back!” Jeremy looked wild now, his sanity slipping.
Rathbone made progress against the wall, but Cole began to despair that he wouldn’t reach her in time. Even if he did, they couldn’t be sure the two-story drop wasn’t enough to cause them both irreparable damage.
“Jeremy.” He stopped. “Mr. Carson, we both love that woman, and want to protect her—”
“You don’t love her!” Jeremy produced a gesture of scorn with his free hand, and his grip slipped, dropping Imogen several inches before he grabbed on with both hands again.
Cole died a little in that moment.
“You don’t even know what she’s been through because of you, do you?” The astonished disgust in Jeremy’s voice dishonored him.
Did he? “I never meant to hurt her.”
“Empty words, they say.” Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “Empty words from an empty man. Did you know saving your worthless life cost her her position at the hospital? She came to me when it happened. Not you. Told me the sad tale, that she worried her family would starve. That night, she was attacked in an alley and she stabbed the man. Almost killed him. But I finished the job, so the blood wasn’t on her hands. So she could still go to heaven. So they wouldn’t take her back to where they are from.”
“They?” Cole asked.
“Demons. Demons. Demons Demons…” Jeremy said the word faintly at first, then repeated it louder. “They want her. They want her light. But I protect her from them. That’s why I’m taking her, don’t you see? I’m taking her somewhere they can’t find her.”
Sweet Christ, he was truly mad. “Who are these demons?” Cole asked, gesturing to Rathbone to hurry. “Where are they? I’ll help you fight them.”
Jeremy’s face fell. He didn’t look young anymore.
A cloud crossed the moon, casting the night in pure shadow. Cole dropped his arms while simultaneously unsheathing his hidden blade. He worked to free it from its coil in his prosthesis, his fingers slow with mounting terror. He couldn’t see Jeremy any longer as the window had become a black void of shadow.
His eyes tracked where Imogen swayed limply in the white sheet; only a fall of red-gold hair and one delicately arched foot were visible. He’d never been a praying man, but as he carefully and quietly worked on freeing the knife, he prayed to every deity he’d ever heard of in his extensive travels. He bargained. He pleaded. And he vowed.
I would have your forgiveness, God, but I’d side with the devil to save her.
“We all have demons, don’t we, Your Grace?” The voice came from the window. It was no longer Jeremy. But someone else. Someone who resided inside of him, a construct of his diseased mind.
Cole knew there was no bargaining with this iteration. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he ordered, letting the fury seep into his voice. “Whoever you are, it’s not worth what I will do to you if any harm comes to her.”
“I am one of them,” the voice confirmed, disappointingly undaunted. “I don’t know which I find funnier, the fact that Jeremy thought he could hide her from me, or the fact that you think you can save her from me.” The evil laugh that rolled from the darkness twisted the knife in Cole’s gut.
She slipped farther down, before stopping with a jerk, her body swinging against the side of the house.
A raw growl escaped Cole, and he rushed forward.
“No you don’t,” the voice taunted, releasing her once more, and again catching her with a cruel yank.
Barely controlling the tempest inside of him, Cole again planted his feet. “What do you want?” he asked tightly, feeling at once helpless and homicidal.
“I want to decide what would be more fun. Making you watch her die like this, or pulling her back up and seeing if you can race up here before I crush her windpipe with my bare hands.”
Cole’s breath caught, his eyes swinging wildly to the clouds, to Rathbone, to his knife, and back to Imogen.
“You die tonight,” he vowed. “But I’ll give you one chance to go to the grave with your limbs attached. Let her go. Now. Or the consequences will be more painful than you can imagine.”
“Let her go, you say?” The clouds shifted, just enough …
“You choose.” Cole’s voice was hard. Violent. Almost as demonic as the man holding her hostage. “Release her, and you die quickly. Do anything else, and you die screaming.”
“Very well…” Jeremy’s voice turned serpentine. Almost gleeful. “You’ve talked me into it. I’ll release her.”
And he did.
Cole threw the blade with lethal precision as three things happened with perfect, simultaneous fluidity. Rathbone caught Imogen, rolling them both to the ground to minimize impact. O’Mara splintered open the door to the countess suite with a powerful kick. And Jeremy pitched forward out the window as the knife he’d not seen found purchase in his chest, before he landed in a broken twist of limbs.