Carswell turned without being asked a second time. I got some very amused looks, but everyone turned, except for Gideon. "I would be a poor bodyguard if I allowed you to shoot us in the back while we were defending your modesty." He had a point.
"All right, I'll turn my back." Which I did, fishing the gun out for the last time. The bellyband was a good idea, but the Firestar was going in the other coat pocket when I got it back. I was tired of messing with it.
I handed the gun to Gideon. He took it, still looking amused. "Is that everything except for the knives?"
"Yes," I said.
"Your word of honor?"
I nodded. "My word."
He nodded, too, as if that was enough. I knew already that Carswell was someone's human servant. He was the genuine article, a British soldier of Queen Victoria's army. But until that moment I hadn't known that Gideon was as old. Lycanthropes don't age that slowly. He was getting help from somewhere or he was more than just a shapeshifter.
"Lycanthrope," I said, "but what else are you?"
He smiled then, flashing small fangs top and bottom. The only other lycanthrope I'd seen with fangs like that had been Gabriel. You get things like that if you spend too much time in animal form.
"Guess," he said in a whisper so low and rumbling it made me shiver.
Carswell said, "May we turn around, Miss Blake?"
"Sure," I said.
He slid his jacket back on, smoothing it in place, and offered me his arm once more. "Shall we, Miss Blake?"
"Anita, my name's Anita."
He smiled. "Then you may call me Thomas." He said it as if he didn't let a lot of people call him by his first name.
It made me smile. "Thank you, Thomas."
He tucked my arm more securely in the crook of his own. "I do wish... Anita, that our meeting could be under better circumstances."
I met his sad eyes and said, "What's happening to my people while you delay me here with your polite smiles?"
He sighed. "I am hoping he will be finished before we walk in upon them." A look almost like pain crossed his face. "It is not a sight fit for a lady."
I tried to pull my arm free, and he gripped it more tightly. His eyes weren't sad anymore. They were full of something I couldn't read. "Know that this is not my choice."
"Let go of me, Thomas."
He let me draw my arm free of him. I was suddenly afraid of what was inside the tent. I'd never spoken with Vivian, and Gregory was a perverted piece of shit, but I suddenly didn't want to see what had happened to them.
Gideon said, "Thomas, should she...?"
"Let her," he said. "She has only the knives."
I didn't exactly run, but I was close when I reached the closed flap of the tent. I heard Richard say, "Anita..."
I felt him coming up behind me, but I didn't wait. I flung the flap aside and stepped inside. The tent had just one ring, the center ring. Gregory lay in a na**d heap in the center of that ring, hands bound behind his back with thick grey tape. His body was a mass of bruises and cuts. I could see bone glistening in his legs, jagged and wet where they'd broken his legs. Compound fractures are very nasty things. That was why he couldn't walk out on his own power. They'd broken his legs.
There was a small sound that drew me down the aisle to the railing around the ring. Vivian and Fernando were in the ring, too. I'd missed them because they were too close to the side of the railing, hidden from view.
Vivian raised her face up from the ground, tape across her mouth, one eye bloody and swollen shut. Fernando shoved her face back to the ground, showing her hands bound with tape. Showing what he was doing to her. He drew himself out of her, wet and finished at last. He patted her bare butt, giving her a small slap. "That was nice."
I was already walking towards them across the sand of the ring. Which means I'd gotten over the railing in spike heels and a floor-length skirt. I didn't remember doing it.
Fernando stood, fastening his pants, smiling at me. "If you hadn't bargained for her freedom, I'd have never been allowed to touch her. My father doesn't share."