Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,135
on hers to swallow the undercurrent of fear marking her husky voice. The same fear that marks my soul. I devour her, forcing her lips open with a thrust of my tongue. She tastes like dreams. She tastes like life. My body aches to curl around her, to pull her flush against me until I can feel her heartbeat flutter against my chest. Freedom. Happiness. Sunshine. Almost there, almost there. With a clenched jaw, I tear away before I lose myself completely.
Those violet eyes lift to my face on a shattered breath.
Her fingers curl into her palm, shoulders rising and falling with emotion, and then she presses two fingers to her lips like she can hold onto the taste of me forever. No cunning smiles to issue a challenge this time. No lethal grins to make me feel duped. Instead, Rowena slides the revolver into the waistband of her joggers, as if it’s a move that she’s done a thousand times over, and then she shifts onto her toes and presses those same two fingers to my own lips.
Her touch is a vow.
A vow that she’ll walk with me in the darkness, that she’ll dance in the pits of hell at my side. A vow that she is here, beside me, and I’m not alone.
Her whispered words hit me at the same time that I hear commotion entering the chamber: “Have no mercy.”
41
Damien
The Met’s police commissioner enters the Bascule Chambers exactly as I figured he would—with a sobbing Alfie Barker held at gunpoint.
I touch Rowena’s wrist to make sure she doesn’t make a sound.
We can’t reveal ourselves until the right moment or this will all come crashing down on our heads. Barker knows the plan; Samuel and Gregory—who should be trailing behind at a safe distance to avoid being seen—know the plan. And while Guy doesn’t know much of anything, he hasn’t failed a mission in the twenty years since we’ve returned from Paris. He’ll catch on, quick.
Stumbling forward from the brightly lit tunnel into the darkened chamber, Barker lifts his arms in surrender. Tears streak down his cheeks. Blood beads on his temple. He begins to beg, shamelessly, the second that the pistol jams, hard, into the back of his skull: “I have children. Daughters. Don’t . . . Oh, God, please don’t do this. Please.”
Marcus Guthram’s expression remains rigidly impassive. “You should have thought of that before you kidnapped him.” He shoves Barker deeper into the chamber. “Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” The impassivity contorts, revealing a fury that flares his nostrils. Like father, like son. “You sent me pictures of him nearly dead, you spineless twat! And now you want to tell me that you don’t know?”
A tendril of light reveals Barker’s trembling fingers. “He’s here, I promise. He’s—”
“Alive,” I finish for him, stepping out from the darkness. “Although for how long remains completely up to you, Commissioner.”
At the sound of my voice, Marcus’s head snaps in my direction.
The gun aimed at Barker now swings to me, and he snarls, “I should have known you were behind this.”
“And yet you came anyway.” I hold my hands up high to show that I’m not carrying. Not that he expects me to be empty-handed—and he’d be right. I’ve three knives tucked away, and two handguns holstered, one at my waist and the other at my ankle. I prepared for nothing less than war. “Some might even say you came hoping that I’d be the one waiting for you.”
“This piece of—” Lip curling, he slashes his arm and nails Barker in the back of the skull with the gun. The thud resonates through the chamber and Barker crumples instantly, his legs ceding defeat beneath him. Over the sound of his limp body hitting brick, Marcus taunts, “Having others do your dirty work now, Priest? Or were you too scared to meet me on your own?”
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
At the now-familiar words, I nearly bark out a laugh. “And here I thought you never missed a thing but maybe . . .” Rolling one shoulder, I keep my hands lifted by my ears. “Maybe you’re just too busy to notice when six of your men don’t return from a mission. Not great leadership on your part, I’ll say that, but no one’s ever accused you of knowing what the fuck you’re doing.”
The line of his arm barely dips. “Where are they? Priest, you better tell me—”