Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,59

slow time itself.

“Felicity! She didn’t leave in time!”

Raphael had to employ both hands to stop Mercy from lunging through the brawl toward the far staircase.

Where Marco Villeneuve fought against the crowd of tussling men, his arm around the waist of a struggling, petite woman Mercy’s exact likeness in feature and formal gown.

Felicity’s mask had been torn away and her hair ruined by the cruel hand threaded through it, using the pain of his grasp to subdue her.

Tears streamed down cheeks frozen in a heart-wrenching mask of panic that Raphael could never even imagine painted on Mercy’s resolute features.

“We have to get to her!” Mercy cried, her own expression more temper than terror.

Felicity spotted them across the crowd, and the sight seemed to inject her with courage. As close as they were to the fire, Felicity’s struggles produced violent coughs that interrupted her sobs. However, she landed a lucky blow with her elbow into Marco’s sharp jaw.

Stunned, Marco released her.

Only to spin her around and deliver a merciless blow with the back of his hand.

Felicity dropped beneath the fray, disappearing from view.

An inhuman roar brought Raphael’s notice to the top of the stairs.

What he saw slackened his limbs with shock.

Mercy chose that moment to lunge so frantically toward her sister, and he almost lost his grip. “Let me go!” she screamed. “I will murder that man!”

“You won’t have to,” he said, strengthening his grip on her, pointing to the top of the stairs.

Gabriel was unmistakable, even in a lupine mask Raphael had never seen before. He charged down the stairs toward Marco. What men were not tossed over the banister became little better than smears on the wall.

To Marco’s credit, he stood against the oncoming juggernaut, pulling a knife from his belt.

A shot from the direction of the door brought time to an absolute standstill. Everyone screamed and the collective crowd ducked, subsequently checking themselves for wounds.

“Are you struck?” Raphael grasped Mercy, gripped with horror. “Dammit, are you all right?”

“I’m unharmed,” she said, her voice shaking and small.

Raphael checked the entry for the shooter but could identify none.

When he looked back toward the stairs to find that Gabriel had disappeared in the thickening smoke, he felt as though the bullet had found his own chest.

Marco was reaching down to collect Felicity, who’d yet to recover from his blow.

Raphael wheezed out his brother’s name just in time to watch him rise from behind the banister like the very specter of the black-swathed reaper.

Gabriel and Marco both lashed out at the same time, one with his blade, the other with nothing more than a scarred fist the size of a sledgehammer.

Gabriel’s punch connected with an audibly satisfying crunch of bone, though Marco’s knife barely missed the eye he’d aimed it for.

By the time the traitorous Spaniard finished rolling arse-over-end to land in a twisted heap, Gabriel had stooped to retrieve Felicity from where she’d been draped unconscious on the stairs.

Raphael’s eyes burned, his throat closed over with emotion.

Not with relief.

With horror.

Horror that echoed in the gasps and exclamations of the congregation before leaping out of Gabriel’s way as he carried the young Baron’s daughter like a bolt of cobalt cloth.

Marco’s knife had missed his brother’s flesh, but it’d cut his mask away.

Exposing his face to everyone.

Gabriel kept his chin held high, relentlessly marched forward, using his monstrous appearance to part the sea of people still ebbing toward the door.

Raphael surged forward, shoving through the crowd, knowing he’d get Mercy to safety.

Trusting his brother to save Felicity.

He could see through the doors ahead that Morley had tossed his prisoners into the police wagon. Just in time to catch a sobbing woman with a bloodied nose as she collapsed.

Raphael had half-expected the Chief Inspector to have fired the shot, as he was a famous marksman, but there was no way he could have done it.

He was simply too far away.

Just as they were about to break free of the castle’s threshold, a figure lunged from around the corner and kicked out at Mercy’s legs.

She gave a sharp cry of pain, and went sprawling onto her hands and knees.

Striking like a venomous cobra, Raphael had the man’s throat in a vice grip before anyone could react. “You’ll die for that,” he vowed, reaching down with his other hand to lift Mercy off the ground.

“So says the dead man walking.” Even over the deafening chaos, the unmistakable click of a pistol washed Raphael’s veins in ice.

“Think you can knock me down and get away with it?” sneered