Lord of Fire (51 page)

Then and only then, Lucien promised himself blackly, he would blow the bastard’s head off. As he gave chase, his heart thundered with blood lust that was not tempered even by the sight of St. Dunstan’s weightless Gothic bell tower and serene religious statues as Bardou ran into the church. Lucien noticed Bardou’s slight limp as he raced in after him. The Frenchman seemed to favor his right leg. Inside the ancient stone walls of the church, a few old ladies were dusting the pews and chatting in low tones. Unnoticed, Lucien glided silently through the gloom of the church; Bardou exited on the other side of the nave.

Plunging outdoors once more into the noise of the city and the cold overcast afternoon, Lucien trailed Bardou as the man ran down St. Dunstan’s Hill and back to Lower Thames Street. To his surprise, the son of a bitch backtracked to
Blackfriars
Bridge
and crossed it on foot.

So, he’s not working out of the City,
he realized in surprise.
No wonder the constables’ sweep of the riverside warehouses turned up nothing. He’s working out of Southwark or Lambeth, on the other side of the river.

Lucien trailed him as he reached the south shore of the
Thames and made his way down

Albion Street

, making a quick right turn onto

Upper Ground Street

, which soon turned into Narrow Wall Street. Everywhere, the wheels of industry were turning, getting in their last hour of production before the holiday. The smells of the fishing docks and the various factories clustered in the area filled the cold autumn air. Bardou pressed on with a purposeful stride, his limp becoming more pronounced as their walk dragged on. He passed the old Barge Brewery, the cloth manufactory, the iron foundry. Lucien shadowed him through the busy timber yards until, at last, Bardou hurried toward a dilapidated brick warehouse that sat alone, overgrown with weeds, at the river’s edge. Though it looked abandoned, there was smoke rising from the chimney.

Keeping to the shadows of the high fence that surrounded the adjoining timber yard, Lucien glided closer, studying the situation as dusk fell. A rifleman stood guard at both of the warehouse’s corners that were visible from his standpoint. Bardou returned their salutes as he ducked furtively into the building.

Lucien could only assume that there were men posted on the other two corners, as well, but he doubted there were many more inside. On enemy ground, a wise agent winnowed his forces down to the smallest number of the most highly skilled men he could acquire. Lucien was very interested to know what was inside that warehouse, but first he had to get rid of the guards.

Mayhem glittered in his eyes and the siren’s call of revenge sang in his blood as he holstered his pistol and slid his dagger out of its sheath with a soft whisper of metal. He clung to the fence’s shadow, then moved from cover to cover, inching closer like a lion in the grass. His heart thundering, he used the cast-off chunks of factory machinery strewn here and there—a great capstan from some long-rotted hulk, a broken-down wagon, a pile of bricks—to conceal his approach. He picked up a handful of pebbles as he crept into striking distance.

A few moments later, the first guard turned in the direction of a small, suspicious sound. When he turned his back, Lucien materialized behind him, grabbed the man from behind, clamping his hand over his mouth, and cut his throat without a noise. Almost with a kind of elegance, he set the body down silently, thrusting it well out of view, then faded back into the shadows of the building’s edge. Rage chanted through his spirit like his minions in the Grotto at their most intoxicated, their most ecstatic, even as he struggled to hold
Alice’s love in his heart, fueling him to justice, not the cruelty that his hatred would prescribe.

In under five minutes, the second guard met a similar fate, but as Lucien stalked up behind the third, the man turned and saw him.

The guard let out a yell as Lucien knocked the rifle out of his hands. The fourth shouted from fifty yards away. Lucien yanked the disarmed guard in front of him just as the fourth guard fired his rifle. The bullet struck the hefty Frenchman instead of him. Lucien dropped the third man, smoothly pulled out one of his pair of Manton pistols, and took aim before the fourth guard could reload. He saw the man’s eyes widen in dread, frozen in his sights; then he pulled the trigger.

Mere seconds had passed. The fourth guard was still twitching in the dust as Lucien drew his second pistol, stalked up to the door of the warehouse, and kicked it open, nearly throwing it off its rusty hinges. As it flung open, he came face-to-face with Bardou, a mere six or seven feet between them. Apparently, the Frenchman had been rushing toward the door to investigate the sound of gunfire outside. Bardou froze as Lucien brought up his pistol and leveled it at him.

“Give my regards to the devil.”

“Don’t shoot, Argus! Look!” Bardou raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, but nodded toward the barrels stacked just behind him.

Lucien’s gaze flicked to the white letter A painted on each barrel. Top quality gunpowder. The explosives Sophia had warned him about, he realized.

His glance swept the warehouse, freezing in shock on the cannon with its nose pointed out the window. It was aimed straight across the river at Parliament. No wonder he hadn’t found any explosives planted in Westminster Hall. Bardou had planned on launching his attack from here. He saw the portable stove thrust into the large industrial hearth, throwing off heat that made the whole warehouse uncomfortably warm.
Good God,
he realized in horror,
Bardou had been preparing hot shot.

“If you pull that trigger, we both die,” Bardou warned. “All it takes is one spark.”

“Move away from the barrels.”

He laughed softly, shaking his head. “I think not.”

“Come away from those barrels and
fight me
, you coward!” Lucien roared.

“Coward?”

“You hid behind Caro the same way you’re trying to shield yourself with those barrels. Maybe you don’t dare, now that I’m no longer in chains.”

“Well, maybe you had better pull that trigger and kill us both, Argus, because I know now about your little mistress, Alice Montague.” Bardou smiled as Lucien’s face drained of color. “Such a tender young beauty. I hope she fights me when I take her. I hope she cries. In fact, I’ll make sure that she does.”

Blind rage overwhelmed Lucien. With hellfire burning in his eyes, he tossed his pistol aside, well out of Bardou’s reach. He did not need it to kill the son of a bitch. He wanted to do it with his bare hands. Lucien charged him, slamming Bardou back bodily into the stacked barrels of gunpowder, which crashed down all around them, some splitting and puffing up clouds of black powder that hung in the air like soot and covered both men in a fine, metallic dust. Lucien hauled back and smashed his fist into Bardou’s jaw.

They fought savagely, pummeling each other with blood in their eyes. Lucien was impervious to the punches he took until Bardou’s fist slammed into his stitches. He let out a harsh cry of pain and doubled over, failing to block Bardou’s next blow to his head. It knocked him to the ground. He coughed, inhaling a bit of the gunpowder that puffed up around him as he fell.

With a brutish grunt, Bardou heaved one of the barrels of gunpowder up and held it aloft over Lucien, who shook his head clear just in time to react. Recalling Bardou’s limp, he kicked him in the right knee with shattering force. Bardou let out a roar of pain and dropped the barrel. Lucien rolled out of the way as the barrel crashed to the floor and broke open.

Cursing over his injured leg, Bardou ran off at a crippled hobble out of the warehouse, pausing only long enough to grab a sleek leather rifle case.
He was escaping!
Lucien searched frantically through the deep layer of black powder, trying to find his cast-off pistol. Once the Frenchman left the vicinity of the gunpowder, Lucien could safely fire at him. Failing to find his pistol quickly enough, he dragged himself up and ran doggedly after Bardou. When he flung out of the warehouse, he looked around, then saw Bardou climbing into a rowboat at the water’s edge. Beyond, the fiery sunset faded into the western horizon.

“Bardou!” he bellowed.

As Lucien ran after him, Bardou untied the boat from the post and pushed away from the small wooden dock with an oar. Lucien took a running leap off the dock and landed with a crash on top of Bardou in the boat as the current of the
Thames began moving them along at an ever-quickening pace.

Lucien whipped out his dagger and slashed at Bardou, but the Frenchman blocked the arc of his knife with the oar, then grasped Lucien’s wrist. They struggled and Lucien let out a furious curse, dropping his dagger over the side into the rushing river when Bardou bashed his wrist on the metal oarlock, then knocked him back with a blow from the oar.

“Now you die,” Bardou snarled. Falling atop him, he wrapped his big hands around Lucien’s throat and began strangling him, choking the life out of him.

With each vain attempt to pull air into his lungs, Lucien felt his awareness sliding back into an ancient panic.
Can’t . . . breathe.
The terror of his childhood asthma attacks came flooding back to him, a deeply ingrained fear against which he had no defense. He pummeled Bardou’s stomach and clawed at his face until the little boat pitched wildly with their struggles. He started to throw Bardou off and in the next heartbeat, fell over the side. Before he knew what had happened to him, he was underwater, sucked down under a current so frigid it shocked him. He nearly drowned himself with the impulse to gasp for air now that the viselike grip had been removed from his throat. For that instant, he didn’t care that Bardou was escaping. All that mattered was getting air into his lungs. The cold, murky
Thames tumbled him in a somersault, but he righted himself and pulled upward against the weight of his waterlogged boots and clothes.

He shot to the surface, gasping and choking for breath. As he wiped the water out of his eyes, drinking in great lungfuls of air, he saw Bardou rowing swiftly with the current.

“You haven’t begun to suffer, Knight!” Bardou shouted over the water at him. “Just wait till I kill Alice Montague!”

“No!”
he choked out. “God damn it!” Though his strength was spent, pure rage fueled Lucien’s strokes as he swam back to the docks against the sweeping pull of the current. Bruised and bleeding, shivering with the wintry cold, his clothes and hair dripping with greasy
Thames water, he felt nothing but volcanic fury as he grasped the ladder on the dock and pulled himself out of the river. He scrambled up onto the dock and ran through the warehouse yard, past the strewn bodies of the guards and the industrial refuse, making his way back out to Narrow Wall Street.

With the sky darkening in autumn’;s early twilight, people were already milling about in the streets, waving their Guy Fawkes torches, singing their songs, and drinking their ale. In the distance, the revelers had already begun to set off crackers and Roman candles, but some children darted in front of Lucien, chanting,
“Guy, guy, guy! Stick him up on high! Hang him on a lamppost and leave him there to die!”

He dodged around them, his pulse thundering in his ears as he raced toward
Westminster
Bridge
. He heard the first celebratory cannons being fired from the direction of the royal parks. Their booming report reverberated in his chest, taking him back in a flash to his army days and the wild rage of battle. His mind was crisply clear, and he realized that he would never get to
Alice first on foot.

Pounding up to the well-trafficked bridge, his waterlogged boots slogging with every stride, he stepped into the road in front of a dandy on a tall gray horse. The spooked gray reared up, but Lucien seized the reins and laid hold of the bridle.

“Get down,” he ordered the rider in a deadly tone.

“What is the meaning of this? Remove your hands from my—whoa!” the man cried as Lucien pulled him down out of the saddle, leaving him in a heap on the bridge. “Thief! Stop thief!”

Lucien swung up into the saddle and rode, urging the nervous gray into a gallop. He flew past the other traffic on the bridge as the first burst of the holiday fireworks climbed into the sky over the river and exploded in a hail of blue, red, and green, followed by another in resplendent orange and yellow. He glanced at the water. By their colorful illumination, he searched the river’s glittering surface for Bardou’s rowboat and let out a sharp curse as he spied the big Frenchman already climbing out of the boat onto the wharf by

Craven Street

. Bardou knew that Lucien trusted his twin brother above all men, thus, could easily deduce that he had sent
Alice to be protected by Damien at Knight House. It was reasonable for Bardou at least to check there, since Knight House was so close. Bardou need only take

Cockspur Street

to
Pall Mall; from there it was practically a straight shot to the mansion. Lucien urged the gray on at breakneck speed, flying past the elegant wrought-iron lamps on the bridge.
Too many streets lay between him and Alice,
he thought, his face set in grim frustration. His only hope of arriving before Bardou was to cut through St. James’s Park, where the fire festival was under way.