Footsteps dogged her own. Heavy footsteps.
Someone tall was behind them, taking one step to every two of hers and four of poor Phoebe’s. This time, when Cecelia’s walking turned to rushing, the girl made no argument, as she, too, sensed the same danger in the dark.
The footsteps behind didn’t hasten, and Cecelia breathed a little easier as she gained some distance.
Until she ran headlong into a wall of solid male chest.
One quick inhale told her it was categorically not Ramsay.
This man reeked of unlaundered clothing, cigar smoke, and gin with a pungent, almost astringent, cologne.
Cecelia gasped and hopped back, looking up into a half-rotten smile covered by an ill-kempt mustache.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she breathed, shoving Phoebe behind her and stepping to the side to go around him.
He matched her movement, blocking her escape. “Ya might beg.” His posture and tone remained agreeable, making his words all the more chilling. His breath smelled of refuse as a smile of relish spread over his craggy features. Evil gleamed in dark eyes much too small for such a large man. “Aye, you’ll beg aw’right. But there’ll be no pardon.”
Panic flared, and Cecelia drew the knife from her pocket, brandishing it at the brigand. “Step aside,” she commanded, in a voice she wished were stronger. “Or I’ll scream for the watch.”
“We timed this so’s that ’e won’t ’ear ya.” His smile became a rancid leer. “But ’e will find what’s left of ya, sure enough.”
We. He wasn’t alone.
Cecelia did the only thing she could think of. She tossed Phoebe around the man. “Run!” she called. “Don’t look back.”
Phoebe’s little pumping legs were the last thing Cecelia saw before the man charged her.
His heft lifted her bodily off her feet as he dragged her into the darkened alley and slammed her against the bricks hard enough to deflate her lungs. “You’ll pay for that, ya fat cow,” he vowed before he jerked his head in the direction Phoebe had fled.
Another bruiser streaked by. The man with the pistol. The one whose footsteps she’d heard behind her.
Cecelia’s anxiety gave way to the instinct from before. She could not allow him to get to Phoebe. She’d die first.
Or kill.
Cecelia slashed out blindly with her knife, fighting to draw breath into lungs that refused to obey. She was able to drag the blade in a short slide across the man’s chest before he grasped her wrist and pressed hard against a tender spot.
Her fingers went limp of their own volition, and the knife clattered uselessly to the ground, taking her hopes of survival with it.
“I’ll cut ya slow for that.”
Anger gave way to rage, intense and absolute. At herself just as much as her attackers. If any harm befell Phoebe it would be her fault. She’d taken the girl from the safety of their home.
Gathering a burst of strength, she squirmed and fought like a wild creature. She clawed and scratched and pushed at her large assailant with enough effect to throw him off balance.
She might be a fat cow, but her weight lent her strength many delicate females just didn’t possess.
Jacket buttons scattered. Her spectacles were dragged from her ears and her hat was wrenched painfully from her head, ripping some hair along with it. The sound of it separating from her scalp was loud and dreadful.
She finally drew in enough air for a wretched semblance of a scream. Could anyone hear? Would they come to her aid?
A fist snaked out of the darkness, striking her with enough strength to snap her neck back and bash her head against the brick.
The second man? Had he gotten to Phoebe? Or was this a third attacker?
She crumpled to the ground. Cheek throbbing. Vision swimming with darkness and strange flashes of electric light.
Her periphery dimmed and her vision tunneled, focusing on a flash of silver.
The knife.
She made a desperate, half-blind grab at it, but a boot stomped on her fingers, hard enough to draw a sob, but not to break the bones.
Not yet.
The man who’d struck her, slimmer than the first, bent to retrieve the knife. His teeth were white, his nose long enough to thrust out from beneath the shadow of his bowler cap. But she couldn’t make out his features. Not in the half dark without her spectacles.
“You all was warned what would happen if one of them girls ran.” His voice was young and sharp, though it sounded as though his nasal passages were blocked with a cold.
“What?” Cecelia shrank against the brick, trying to make herself small. Doing her best to understand what he was saying. This wasn’t the man who’d chased Phoebe. He was too thin.
Had the girl escaped? Please God let her get away.
“We need one more now. Your littl’un will do nicely.”
“No!” Cecelia’s cry erupted as a moan. “No, take me. Don’t touch Phoebe. She’s just…” She fought for breath, for consciousness. “She’s just a child.”
“Yeah.” The bigger thug grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back and exposing her throat. “That’s rather the point.”
“Where’s the book?” The thin man pressed the knife to her throat, its cold steel biting into the thin skin. “Give it over to the Crimson Council and we might let you live.”
She knew they were lying. They had no intention of letting her live.
A raw, strangled noise filtered to them from the street. A gunshot broke against the stone.
The two men looked at each other.
“He’d better not have shot the girl,” the lean one said.
Cecelia gave a desolate cry, her heart withering in her chest. No. Not Phoebe.
A shadow shifted, lunged, and Cecelia was roughly released.
She blinked a bit dumbly as the knife dropped to her lap.
The brutish man crashed against the brick wall opposite Cecelia and was held there by an even larger, taller form.
Cecelia squinted, struggling to see.
The thin man sprawled out on the cobbles, though how he’d gotten there was a mystery to her.
The crunch of flesh meeting flesh drew her notice back to the two shadows at the wall. One was large, the other enormous.
Ramsay.
He was the only man of her acquaintance with such a tremendous build. The only one who could move with such astonishing quietude.
The only man who even growled in a Scottish accent.
The names Genny had called him made so much sense now. He was the devil, relentless and inescapable, bringing with him all the punishing castigation the dark could devise.
He’d a pistol in his left hand, but he subdued the thrashing brute easily, shoving the gun beneath his chin. He ignored the one blow the man managed to land at his temple and drove his right fist into the thug’s face again and again with single-minded acumen and unparalleled skill. Little cracking sounds might have been bones breaking, or rotten teeth falling to the cobbles.
Cecelia found that she didn’t care.
The thin man gained his feet, and for a moment Cecelia thought he might save his compatriot when he surged toward the tussle.
She took up the knife, opening her mouth to warn Ramsay, but there was no need.
With one mighty roar, he grasped the brute’s head and snapped it to the side. The man’s spine made a sound Cecelia would never forget.