Stranger:. Zoe Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ men. They ducked, and the crate shattered into planks and splinters. The bloke with the cudgel recovered faster than his comrade, lunging forward and swinging out with his heavy club. Catullus neatly sidestepped the blow. Then the cudgel hit a brick wall lining the street. The bricks exploded with a flash of blue light.

      Catullus shielded his eyes from the glare. He leapt back to see a hole the size of a door where the cudgel had hit. The man wielding it laughed, a guttural rasp.

      “That’s right, guv,” he chortled with a Liverpudlian roll to his words. “Got me a little something extra, thanks to the gents what hired us.” He held the club up, and Catullus saw a small mark branded into the wood. Catullus had seen that lion brand before on other clubs, knives, and even the wooden handles of guns. It imbued whatever had been branded with the Heirs’ particular variety of dark magic—including a hired tough’s cudgel.

      The man swung the club again, this time hitting the ground. Another blast of light. Catullus staggered from the concussion as the pavement split apart into gaping fractures.

      As he struggled to gain his footing, the other thug pounced, hook swinging. Catullus blocked the wicked curved gaff, then planted a foot in the man’s gut and shoved him back.

      His comrade plowed toward Catullus again.

      “I have a little something extra, as well,” Catullus said. Gripping the brass shotgun shell, he slammed its bottom down onto a nail sticking from a shattered crate.

      The small blast shook him, ran in shock waves up his arm, but it was enough to shoot a little ball of glinting material from the cap. The ball spread into a wire net, which tangled itself around the advancing thug.

      For a few moments, the tough could only flounder and swear, snarled in the net, his cudgel useless against the snare.

      “Never tried that by hand before,” Catullus murmured to himself.

      His companion shoved past and came at Catullus. The hook swung. Catullus lightly stepped back, then grabbed the man’s arm. It was difficult, since Catullus’s hand still buzzed with the aftereffects of the shell’s blast. They grappled, fighting for footing and control of the gaff. Catullus was taller than the thug, but the man was heavier and furious that the intended target wasn’t going down easily. They wrestled, careening back and forth between the walls lining the street. A hot trail of pain gleamed as the hook caught the top of Catullus’s cheekbone.

      With a sudden grunt, the man collapsed against Catullus. Peering over the unconscious man’s shoulder, Catullus saw something rather amazing.

      Gemma Murphy held a heavy rope, one end tied into a large, weighty knot. The stain of red and clump of hair attached to the knot testified to how hard she had hit Catullus’s assailant.

      “Dead?” she asked.

      Catullus shoved at the man heavily against him. The man crumpled to the ground. “No, but he smells like it.” He strode to where the cudgel-wielding tough still struggled against the net. With one quick punch, Catullus knocked the man unconscious. Like his associate, the thug collapsed to the ground.

      “Deft,” Catullus murmured, glancing between the rope she held, then up at Miss Murphy.

      She looked back at him with a gleam of triumph hidden beneath careful sangfroid, then turned to the net, still covering the insensate thug. “What are you doing with a net inside a shotgun shell?”

      “I had planned on using it for fishing. It has a much smaller charge than with a typical shell.” Which had kept him from blowing his own hand up. He shook it out, losing the last traces of the reverberations.

      “Diabolical,” she added, eyeing the intricate wire net.

      Catullus smiled modestly.

      Then Gemma Murphy glanced behind him with a frown. “Your friends—”

      Hell. He’d been so amazed at Miss Murphy’s appearance, he had almost forgotten Astrid and Lesperance. He turned to them now. One of their assailants lay upon the ground, unconscious or dead Catullus could not tell. The other two were giving a hell of a fight. Lesperance bared his teeth as he and his attacker traded punches, while Astrid sent a flurry of deliberate kicks toward the stomach and legs of the thug advancing on her.

      The man bearing down on Astrid glanced over to see Catullus standing with Gemma Murphy. His watery little eyes took stock of everyone in the alley, as though cataloguing them for a future report to the Heirs. Yet the thug not only saw Catullus, Astrid, and Lesperance, but Gemma Murphy as well, including her in their ranks. Too late did Catullus step in front of her, shielding her from his gaze. Astrid also darted a glance in Catullus’s direction, giving her attacker a tiny opening. But instead of launching an assault, the man spun on his heels and darted away. He’d calculated the odds and found them decidedly not in his favor.

      So he fled.

      His comrade wasn’t so lucky. Lesperance punished him with punches until the remaining thug slid in a boneless, bloody heap to the grimy pavement.

      “Everyone all right?” Catullus asked.

      Astrid nodded, and Lesperance grunted an assent, gingerly adjusting his jaw.

      “And you?” Catullus turned to Miss Murphy.

      She also nodded, though she held up one slim hand, revealing red, chafed fingers “Little bit of rope burn.” She shrugged off this small injury.

      “What are you doing here?” Astrid demanded.

      Miss Murphy was not fazed by Astrid’s harsh tone. “I had a feeling that trouble might follow you off the ship.” She glanced over at the huge hole and fissures left by the cudgel, and raised a brow. “I see I was right.”

      Catullus took advantage of the brief lull to retrieve the cudgel. With a knife, he scratched off the lion brand, rendering it just a piece of heavy wood. He tossed it to the ground and was gratified that it only rolled along the pavement, rather than cleave a gaping hole in the street.

      Miss Murphy still had her questions. “How did they know to find you in Liverpool?”

      “The Heirs must have hired men to watch all the major ports,” said Catullus. He was all brisk business as he collected his bags. “Bristol, London. Southampton, of course. And Liverpool. We have to leave immediately. Before more Heir hooligans arrive.”

      “One of them got away,” Lesperance rumbled. “I can give chase.”

      “How?” asked Gemma Murphy. “He’s probably long gone by now, lost in the crowd.”

      “I’ve got a few ways of tracking someone,” Lesperance said, with a small, dark smile.

      Miss Murphy didn’t understand, but this wasn’t the moment for explanations.

      “No time,” Catullus said. “The authorities might be here any minute and we have to get out of Liverpool now. Grab your bags.” He strode toward Gemma Murphy and wrapped a hand around her slender, strong wrist. She glanced down at the sight, then up again, a question in her eyes.

      “What are you doing?”

      He began to pull her toward the end of the street, toward the train station. “Keeping СКАЧАТЬ