Because there had been one, the sick f**k who had first sunk his teeth into Jack’s neck. A dirty bastard who took the most, who decided who could have a turn and for how long. Jack almost doubled over at the memory, and it was all he could do not to retch.
Will studied the bone goblet before him with undue interest.
A lurching, cold feeling shivered through Jack’s veins, and he laughed without humor. “God, I am a fool.” He gripped the short hairs at the back of his head. “You’re never going to let those names go, are you?”
On a sigh Will stood, his lean face almost pure white as he moved into the shadowed space where candlelight did not reach. “If the Nex—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Jack shouted.
“Well you are going to!” Will volleyed hotly. “I’ve risked my arse to help you. Bad enough that you return the favor by leaving the bodies of our agents on our bloody doorstep.”
That had rather been the point, Jack thought bitterly. What he had not been able to tell Chase last night was that the plinth of Nelson’s Column hid a favored entrance to the Nex lair. Jack took perverse pleasure in knowing that.
Jack shook his head. “I cannot fathom why you continue to work for an organization that thrives on misery.”
Will rounded the table. “We deserve the right to live outside of the shadows. Or have you forgotten those hours forced upon you, hours praying for forgiveness from a God who never showed?”
“I forget nothing. Nor will I kill innocents because I am stronger than they are. That makes me no better than the man who put me on my knees.”
“Says the one who has killed nearly ten supernaturals in cold blood.”
Jack hauled Will close. “Those were no innocents.” His teeth snapped together with an audible click. “They drank my blood.” It burned to say it, to even think it, but the truth could not be denied. And though each kill had destroyed a bit more of his soul, Jack would have done it all over again.
The heat left Will’s light eyes. “Aye. And they deserved to die for it.”
“And the ones who took more than my blood, they do not?” Jack could barely say the words through the hot constriction in his throat. “The Nex let them do it to me. You and yours kept me there.”
“I didn’t even know,” Will snapped back. “And when I learned of their debauchery, I agreed to help you, did I not?”
Jack had to believe that, had he truly known, Will would have taken him out of that hell. But there were times when he wondered if he knew his old friend and partner at all.
“Then give me the rest, damn you,” he said.
“Most of them are our top agents. I cannot reveal their names. If anyone finds out what I am doing, I’m dead. I’m risking my arse for you, but it only goes so far, mate.”
Jack cursed and raked his fingers along his skull, if only to alleviate the pressure building beneath his bones. “Did the Nex kill that shifter?”
Will’s nostrils flared. “Why the devil would we do that?” He snorted in disgust. “He was our biggest supplier. Hell, if you only knew how tasty his blood—”
Jack smashed his fist into Will’s nose. The bony protuberance crunched against his knuckles.
“Shit!” Will’s hand flew up to his face. “Stop f**king attacking me, or I will hit back.” Giving Jack a baleful glare, the bastard wiped at the blood with the back of his sleeve, and the crimson blood became a macabre beard.
“I keep waiting for you to.” Jack would welcome a good knockdown fight with him. “But we both know I can take you apart with one hand.”
“Only because I took a blood oath not to hurt you,” Will said bitterly. An oath Jack had talked him into when they were both ignorant lads of fourteen.
“Pity those oaths don’t bind shifters in the same way they do sanguis.” Jack almost grinned because, when he’d first imparted that small fact to Will, the demon had been bloody brassed off. The thought of them as children sobered Jack. He reached into his greatcoat and tossed Will a linen handkerchief. “I never thought you’d stoop to taking shifter blood.”
Wiping at his face, Will still managed to roll his eyes. “He offered it up, and gladly, you arse.” Will spit upon the ground, then eyed Jack. “We want supernaturals to rule this world. We don’t abuse them.” Jack snorted in sheer incredulity, and Will spoke over him. “That business with you was personal, and you know it.”
“Revenge against Ian, was it?” Jack sneered. “Or was it that I tried to stop Isley from taking over?”
“Take your pick. You made enemies when you chose to side with the SOS. It was bloody stupid not to properly protect yourself against retaliation.”
Yet another regret that filled Jack’s mouth with a foul taste.
Will’s shoulders wilted. “Look, I don’t know who is killing the shifters but he’s bad for business.”
The impostor Bishop had destroyed the Nex’s best shifter blood source.
“Given that he’s mimicking your crimes,” Will added, “I think it safe to assume he’s taken umbrage with you, not the Nex.”
Jack watched Will carefully. “Last night, after we left you, Chase and I were attacked by beings that were half man, half machine. She called them shadow crawlers.”
The interest in Will’s eyes was evident, but they held no hint of guilt. “What happened?”
Jack told him, and Will whistled long and low. “Hell of a thing. Would have liked to see that, actually.”
“I bet you would.” Jack snorted. “You’ve never heard of them?”
“No.” A wry smile pulled at Will’s mouth. “Though my specialty is extermination, not research.”
“I’m done playing,” Jack said in a low voice. “You don’t want to give me the names. Fine. I understand that. I’ll find another way.”
Will glanced at him. “The other way is staring you right in the face. Join us. Your blood is incredibly valuable now. Bargain with them.”
“No.” Jack slashed the air with his hand. “I will not sink that low.” He’d fallen enough because Will was Nex, and that made Jack guilty by association.
“Ah, now, Jack, do not waste an opportunity over righteous indignation. You’re already as good as one of us, at any rate. Once in, it is for life. You’ve always known that.” Will’s hand lashed out and grabbed Jack’s arm, shoving up his sleeve to expose his wrist. “Look at that. Smooth, clear skin.” Eyes flashed with dark humor and too much pity. “Why am I not surprised that you hide it?”
Because it was a shame that he could not bear to look upon. And Will knew it. When Jack tore free, Will lifted his own arm, revealing the mark of the Nex tattooed upon his skin, holding it out like a taunt. “They saved us. Me, you, and Nicky.”
Jack didn’t need reminding. As if he’d forget the ragtag group of orphans collected and trained by the Nex to haunt the streets for funds and information. The sanguis, the shifter, and the half-breed. They’d formed their own little gang of terror, stealing from weaker human gangs before the fools even knew what had hit them. Nicky had been their leader. Following him had been the greatest mistake of Jack’s life.
Leave her. She’s dead anyway, and the bobbies are coming.
Jack pulled himself out of his crippling thoughts. Not that Will had noticed, for he was still sermonizing. “When you couldn’t breathe through the f**king hole shot in your chest, they brought you in.”
Jack shook him off. “And when I wanted out, they beat me until I could not walk, see, or think. Just me and the pain. Who took me in then, Will?”
Will’s upper lip curled. “And what will your new little family do when they find out? When Ian Ranulf realizes his precious adoptive son is no better than the brother he’d been forced to overthrow?” Because Ian’s late brother had sympathized with the Nex’s cause, and Ian most certainly did not.
Deep inside himself, where it did not show, Jack trembled. The air grew thin. There was not enough of it to draw into his compressed lungs. His world was crumbling, and it was of his own making.
Will laughed, short and ugly. “And what of your sweet Mary?”
She is not mine. Never will be. Shit. The shaking within spread outward. Through clenched teeth, Jack got the words out. “Leave her out of this.”
God, but the urge to run and seek her out, protect her from all of this, had his bones aching. But who would protect her from him? The constant knot in his stomach grew larger, harder.
“Or you’ll kill me?” Will offered.
Jack searched his smirking face, the smothering, airless feeling pressing down on his chest. They both knew Jack could not do it. They were bonded by blood and circumstance. Neither of them could betray the other, because they both had too much to lose. Even so, Jack slowly shook his heavy head. “I’ll simply make you wish you were dead.”
Will’s eyes grew cold. “I already do, mate. And the pisser is you know that if Mary should find out what you’ve done, she’ll wish you were dead too.”
Chapter Nine
I do not know how much I can tell you. This”—Poole waved a hand in the direction of the crawler lying upon his dissecting table—“being far beyond my purview.” He harrumphed and bent closer to the body. “At least the other beings you’ve brought me were made of flesh and bone, not like this mechanical nightmare.” The crawler that had breathed fire was about 80 percent metal, though his eyes, glassy and staring up at the ceiling, were far too tortured for Jack’s comfort.
After a long night being beaten black and blue and having to spar with Will this morning, Jack was tired, irritable, and hungry. He moved closer to the table and the portly little surgeon. “Perhaps concentrating on the fleshy bits instead of grousing might help.”
Poole narrowed his eyes at Jack. “Very amusing, Master Talent. Worse than Ranulf, you are. Certainly more of a pain in my—” He cut himself off with a quick apologetic look at Mary Chase, who stood as far away from the table as she could without actually leaving the room.
Wan and silent Chase, who, if Jack had to guess, was trying desperately not to cast up her accounts. She was going a bit green around the mouth.
Jack quirked a brow at her, wondering if he ought to find an excuse to get her out of the room, but upon receiving a defensive frown turned back to Poole. “You can say arse in front of Chase, Mr. Poole. She’s quite familiar with the word, I can assure you.”
“You being the greatest arse,” Chase retorted blandly.
Poole snorted. “Walked into that one, my boy.”
Yes, hadn’t he? Why the devil in him wanted to provoke, he couldn’t say. He’d been twitchy since setting eyes upon her this morning. Why it pleased him that she had the wherewithal to snipe back at him was a mystery as well.
Chase stepped close, bringing the faintest scent of spice with her. The work lights caught the tiny gold earrings in the shape of the goddess Isis that she wore, and when she moved they glimmered, pulling his gaze to the delicate hollow just beneath her ear. Jack’s entire body seized up, his awareness of her humming along his veins. Which was damned annoying.
“The decomposition is quite advanced,” she remarked, and Poole, of course, beamed.
“Quite. What interests me, Mistress Chase, is that the deterioration only went so far, then halted.”
Beneath the harsh electric light of Poole’s surgery, Chase’s skin held a greenish cast, which may or not have been due to her aversion to death, but the smooth curve of her cheek and the lovely turn of her lower lip held Talent’s attention. She was whole and well. A spot on his shoulder tingled, and the memory of her mouth there, licking and sucking, lingered.
Suppressing a grunt of irritation, Jack adjusted his stance. “So he was the walking dead. Or is there another point you’re both alluding to?”
Both Poole and Chase peered back at him as if he’d said something rude, and Jack glared. “Were we to spend endless minutes getting around to the fact that these things are part zombie and part machine?”
With exaggerated patience Poole drew the thick examining spectacles he favored from his breast pocket and put them on. “Don’t know why anyone need speak, seeing as you know all,” he muttered, as he picked up a scalpel and bent very close to the crawler. Using the tip of the blade, he peeled back a flap of skin from a cut he’d previously made along the crawler’s thigh. Beside Jack, Chase swayed a bit before steadying. He resisted offering her a hand. She would hate that, and he did not want to touch her, not after last night’s exchange; that had been hard enough to walk away from.
“What I can tell you,” Poole went on in a crisp voice, “if you care to learn anything, is that this fellow was likely dead before these limbs were applied.”
“How can you tell?” Chase’s question was weak, and her gaze darted to the foot of the table.
Poole’s blue eyes were big as moons behind his glasses as he glanced up. “Well, note the way the blood has collected along—”
He broke off when Chase abruptly turned and left the room with haste. Jack watched her go and then forced his attention back to the bodies upon the table. “I’d advise simply stating the facts with Chase next go-round.”
Poole nodded grimly. “Hides it better than Inspector Lane.” There was no judgment in Poole’s voice. Rare was the soul who did not become ill after, or during, a visit to his surgery.
Jack pressed a knuckle to the underside of his chin as he studied the crawler that used to be Mr. Pierce. “And this one?”