Ascension. A.S. Fenichel

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СКАЧАТЬ tightened around his heart and left him near panicked as he continued his mad search.

      He ran down one narrow alley then another, before hearing voices to his right. Gabriel stopped so abruptly he had to grab the side of the building to keep from falling over in the filth-ridden street. He peered around the corner and saw a short man in a dark topcoat standing about a hundred feet down the alley. In front of him, Belinda grinned but it looked more like she was bearing her teeth. The man’s face remained shaded from Gabriel’s view, and whatever they were talking about he couldn’t ascertain from his position.

      The man grabbed her by the throat.

      Gabriel stepped from the shadows and moved forward, but neither one noticed.

      He hadn’t managed one step and his fragile flower fiancée, reached down beneath her cape, pulled out a dirk and in one smooth motion stabbed her assailant in the gut.

      The stabbed man staggered back a step and released her throat. She stood up tall and stared into the face of her victim.

      Gabriel thought he knew her but this Belinda was a stranger with a gleam of victory in her eyes. His stomach and head whirled. He might become sick.

      She pulled her weapon from the man’s stomach and grinned as she sliced his throat in a motion so smooth, a hardened soldier would have envied her technique.

      Gabriel stepped back into the shadows. He had to force himself to close his mouth as he continued to watch. His mind reeled at the idea that the sweet girl he had grown up with and loved for his entire life had just killed a man in the street without any sign of difficulty or even remorse.

      She knelt down in the street, near the body and wiped her blade clean on the dead man’s coat, before turning and walking to a basement door several feet away. She disappeared down steps and the door closed behind her.

      Gabriel leaned against the wall and for a moment, he feared he would lose his stomach upon the street. Taking deep breaths, he didn’t move while waiting for Belinda to reappear. So many thoughts ran through his mind. He couldn’t reconcile the woman who he had just seen kill so splendidly with the girl he used to play with in the country, or the young woman he’d left crying when he’d gone off to the war in France. What could have happened to send Belinda into a life where she carried a weapon and traversed the streets at night? What was she doing, and what kind of place had she entered, in a basement, in an alley, in Southwark?

      Questions flooded his mind while he minded the door where she’d disappeared. He would have his answers when she reappeared. In the meantime, his heart ached for a woman who might no longer exist, but whom he still loved.

      Nearly thirty minutes passed before the door reopened. A well-dressed gentleman appeared at the top of the stairs. He called back, “Ben, get up here and get this filth out of the street.”

      Two more men, dressed in workingmen’s clothes, topped the stairs and exited the door. They moved toward the body of Belinda’s victim. “Aye, Mr. Foxjohn, Donny and me will take care of it. You just go find the master.”

      Mr. Foxjohn nodded and stepped further into the street running his hand over his slicked back hair. He glanced at the body and pulled a face before turning back to the door. “Ladies, it is time we were getting on. Are you ready?”

      “Of course, Reece.” A stunning red-haired woman alighted from the door. She handed a long black cloak to Foxjohn.

      He helped her wrap the concealing garment around her emerald green gown.

      The couple’s demeanor was so elegant that they might have been exiting the ball of the season. She took his arm and looked back over her shoulder.

      Belinda’s blond head rose from the concealment of the basement doorway and she closed her cloak around her yellow gown, before following the couple up the alley toward where Gabriel was concealed.

      So many thoughts ran through Gabriel’s head that he forgot to watch the two men who wrapped the body in some kind of fabric.

      Then Belinda and the other couple started down the alley directly toward him, and he instinctively pressed his body against the shadowed wall.

      Belinda stopped twenty feet past him and looked back, her expression confused.

      Gabriel held his breath and waited. She couldn’t see him in the dark shadows, and she held no lantern. The idea that she might sense his presence both intrigued and alarmed him. He wasn’t ready to reveal that he’d been following her and he knew nothing of her companions. Better to wait and gather information before making his presence known.

      She turned back toward her friends and rushed down the alley and around a corner.

      Gabriel sighed and stepped away from the wall rubbing his brow.

      “Aye, you there. What are you about?” One of the men who’d been taking charge of the dead man’s body called out to Gabriel.

      Gabriel said, “I’m a bit lost. I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”

      The working man looked Gabriel up and down. “I guess you did, gov. You better head back to the Bridge Street and find yourself a ride over the river before you end up like this bloke.” He pointed to the body now wrapped up for transport.

      “Indeed, I had the same thought.”

      When Gabriel stepped into his own carriage and told the driver to get him back over the river, there was no sign of Belinda and her new friends.

      Chapter 3

      Belinda sniffed the air and searched the dark shadows. “Gabriel?” she whispered.

      Reece turned toward her. “Is something wrong, Belinda?”

      She’d thought she caught Gabriel’s comforting scent waft past her as she and her friends made their way from the basement they used as an office.

      Turning back, she replied, “No, it is nothing.”

      “Are you certain?” he asked.

      She dismissed the notion “Of course.”

      Lillian smiled and took Belinda’s arm. “Let’s get going then, shall we?”

      Belinda nodded and they walked to the road where a carriage awaited them.

      Reece spoke as soon as they were seated and moving. “We may be too late. This news took far longer to reach us than it should have. I shall have to work on a more efficient delivery system.”

      Lillian shrugged her shoulders and her russet curls bounced. “That is a problem for tomorrow, Reece. Tonight we will try to find the master, or Dominus, as they call him. I think it is unwise to attempt to kill him with only the three of us on hand.”

      “I agree. We should have brought Jamie along.”

      Lillian shrugged. “It would have been too obvious. The three of us will look as if we are fish out of water on the docks. We could not risk Jamie’s burly form as well. We’d resemble a mob. You will have to trust that Belinda and I will have your back.”

      “It is not that I do not trust you, my dears. I just СКАЧАТЬ