stag of yours, Countess?” he asked.
No one could see her face, but her angst was apparent. “I think you know I do,” she said, her voice containing more daggers than she’d ever strapped to her body.
“Let me put your mind at ease, my dear, he is unharmed.” Kenway reached out and touched a tendril of her hair, gently examining it in his hand.
Red filtered Chandler’s vision, spilling liquid, molten rage through his veins.
“You will come to me, Countess.” The command was intentionally wicked, and Francesca jerked away from him.
The stag on her left seized her elbow, shoving her forward.
Chandler leapt out of the dark, clearing the platform and sprinting toward the dais.
He’d broken the hand that touched her before the first cultist had time to scream. With a roar, he picked the man up and hurled him into the dark. The crack his body made on the unused rails was a beautiful sound.
The six other stags surrounded him, locking Francesca into their circle with him.
She yanked off her mask and hurled it at one of them before whirling back to face Chandler, panic and relief warring with wrath in her eyes.
He retrieved his asp from his belt and readied himself. He was going to beat to death every one of the men who’d threatened her and see the foolish woman to safety.
Then he’d deal with Kenway once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Francesca wanted to stand back and watch Chandler work. It was almost a thing of beauty, to witness the grace and speed at which he could inflict pain.
Any blows that landed on him seemed to glance off the shield of his near-demonic rage.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a cold mountain of ice. Bleak. Remote. Unfeeling.
Now he was a volcano.
His motions were controlled, his determination absolute. He hit for maximum damage and economy of movement. Like a machine calibrated for violence.
Bones crunched, flesh split, blood flew.
And she had to do something to help.
Francesca ached for her pistol, but when she’d seen her costume for the night, she’d been chagrined to notice there was nowhere to put it.
That had been by Kenway’s design, she thought. He wanted them all not just naked, but bare. Defenseless. Vulnerable.
However, just because she had no weapons didn’t mean she was helpless.
As the stags focused on Chandler, she took advantage of their underestimation of her as a woman to turn for Kenway. He scurried to the south, away from the tunnels, followed by some of his people, to whom he paid no heed.
Men like him always saved themselves first.
No doubt he planned to escape to another of the portals that led from this cavern. They’d been built to drain water, she imagined, and if Kenway followed them, he would end up exactly where he belonged.
The sewers.
She needed to stop him before he escaped.
When she lunged after him, a burly man rose up from the panicking cultists and made as if to stop her. She drew her arm back to gather power and drove the flat of her hand into his nose, feeling the bone give way beneath the blow.
He collapsed instantly, and she turned back to where Kenway had last been seen.
Chaos had erupted, and two other men in suits had joined the fray, lawmen, it seemed, trained to capture and kill.
They shouted commands as they fought to regain control over the anarchy.
In the distance, whistles pealed, and footsteps echoed like cannon blasts on the granite.
The police!
People were scurrying everywhere, some frantic beasts, others pale-faced and terrified, having divested their masks as they made for the various tunnels.
She couldn’t worry about any of them. She had to get to Kenway. He’d almost disappeared.
Thunderous sounds drove her to her knees. Not cannon blasts, exactly, but deafening in the echoes of the underground. She covered her ears with a cry of distress that was lost in the din.
Strong hands lifted her, and she turned to strike out before she looked to find that Chandler had swept her from the floor and was conducting her—half running, half dragging—toward one of the very tunnels that were now filled with smoke from whatever charges they’d set.
“Kenway.” She pointed to where he’d slithered out, coughing against the smoke.
“Fuck Kenway,” he snarled. “I’m getting you out of here.” He shoved a handkerchief over her nose and, for the second time in their lives, led her through acrid smoke to safety.
The ringing in her ears disoriented her enough to make her stumble, and so Chandler picked her up and carried her through