Secrets In Savannah (Phantom Knights) (2 page)

“That is only the beginning of
things to come,” Lucas said. “You murdered my brother, and now I will take from
you every person that you love. First him, and next, your sister.”

No!
Kicking my foot forward, it connected with Lucas. He
howled, but the sound was brief, for I was knocked unconscious.

òòò

Waking to darkness did not alarm
me, but the ache in my head did. Someone had hit me and by the pain on my
temple, the blow was dealt there. My hands were bound behind my back, but there
was nothing covering my head. The darkness came from the room in which I was
being held.

Pushing my back against the wall,
I rose. With my arm pressed against the wood of the wall, my feet shuffled
forward until another wall was reached. Four walls and a door were all that met
my touch. By the distance between walls, it had to be a closet.

Lowering myself back to the cold
floor, my mind went over how I got there, and that led to remembrance. My gasp
sounded loud in the closet as I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain, willing
it under control. My arms and legs began to shake, and the ferocious agony made
me suck in my lips as all I wanted to do was scream.

He killed Jack.

I tried to think of something
else, but every thought, every feeling circled back to Jack. My mind assaulted
me with memories. The first time I saw Jack, the first time he kissed me, when
he rescued me from Nicholas Mansfield. So many memories, but the one that would
stay with me for the rest of my life was his face so full of love and sorrow
right before Lucas shot him.

My stomach was coiled tight. My
body shook so forcefully that my nails made scratching noises against the
floor. My stomach recoiled as Jack’s death replayed in my mind, and I felt as
if I would be alarmingly ill, but the burning sickness would not surface. Tears
would not come. I did not know how to grieve; I had never known how. With as
much sorrow as I had seen in my eighteen years of life I had become a master at
feeling nothing, but this was different. This was Jack, and his death was my
fault.

The guilt would remain with me
forever, just as the guilt of all the deaths by my contriving never left me. I
was ten when I first killed a man, but he was only the beginning. After the
third who had died by my hand, I no longer counted.

I was not worthy of Jack’s love
while he lived, but if it took the rest of my life, I would avenge his death.

Scraping sounds came from the
other side of the door, and my body tensed, preparing for a fight against
Lucas. Rising quickly, and bending my knees, I was ready to attack. When the
door opened, I ran forward into the bright light that blinded me from seeing
whom I was attacking. The light swung aside as a strong hand hit my chest,
holding me back.

“Forever I find you in a scrape,
Ma
belle
,” came a voice thick with a French accent.

My body stiffened for an instant
before sagging. “Do not call me that, Pierre. I am unworthy of the name,” I
replied, feeling too tired to do more than stare at him.

“You are only unworthy if you do
nothing.”

Annoyance slapped me stiff, and I
rose to my full height, which was not much above five feet. “When have I ever
done nothing?”

Pierre smiled and went about
cutting my bonds. As I rubbed my freed wrists, he gently but firmly guided me
down a hall.

“Have you come alone?” I asked,
accepting the pistol that he held out to me.

“When have I ever come alone?”
Pierre mocked me, but it sent relief into me. He led the way down the hallway,
passing open doors with elegant bedchambers. When we reached the end of the
hall and came upon a wide foyer, a slightly hysterical laugh came from my
mouth.

“Arnaud?”

The man who had been Jack’s
family butler for years took my hand and patted it. “Milady, you find me
grateful that you are unharmed.”

“Not quite unharmed, but prepared
to fight,” I replied. “You have my deepest gratitude for coming to my rescue,
but you should not have done so.”

“Leave the fight to my brother?
Bah!” Arnaud exclaimed as he stared at Pierre.

Jack had never known that his
butler worked with me. He had never known that the man was the older brother to
Pierre, a French informant for the Phantoms, who also worked with me.

Thinking of Jack made me ask,
“Where is Marx?” I hoped they had not dealt with him, for that privilege
belonged to me.

“The rat retreated upon our
entrance,” Pierre told me as he glanced out one of the front windows.

They laid before me the situation
and their plans for our escape. They had gotten into the house that Lucas was
holding me in by laying a trap for the guards, but more guards were waiting
outside, between us and our means of transportation. Pierre said that he would
lead the charge, but he cast a look of concern at Arnaud.

“I was leading charges while you
were still a suckling,” Arnaud retorted.

Pierre mumbled something
unflattering in French and Arnaud snorted as he primed his pistols.

“Do you have any knives, Pierre?”
I asked, interrupting the brothers’ bickering.

The Frenchman huffed as he
unbuttoned his coat to reveal it lined with an assortment of weapons. I took
three knives that had good balance.

When we agreed that Arnaud would
follow me from the house, Pierre pulled back the hammers on his pistols, opened
the front door, and began to shoot. Return shots struck the door, the front of
the house, and shattered the window. Arnaud bobbed back and forth as he fired
his pistols through the broken window.

When Pierre gave the signal, we
charged out of the house, Arnaud and I keeping low as Pierre, with his years of
spy and military training, fired at every guard who stood in our way. There was
not a single doubt in my head that Pierre would get us away from there. He and
I had been through such battles in the past and always came out alive.

Lucas had been holding me in a
house out in the woods, but it appeared that he did not expect people to come
after me, because there were only eight guards fighting to keep us from
reaching the carriage.

Pierre took out four, and as
Arnaud and I followed, I pulled out knife after knife, throwing them into the
shoulder, leg, and arm of three guards.

One man ran toward us from around
the house, but Arnaud raised a small silver pistol and shot him before he could
get within five feet of me. We moved forward, but something snagged on my
cloak, and I stumbled backward. Twisting around to pull it free, one of the
wounded guards had a hold on my black cloak and was pulling me toward him. My
body wanted to attack, wanted to unleash some of my anger, but he was unarmed.
I released the clasp, and the cloak fell away.

Running forward with Arnaud, we
reached the carriage first. He opened the door, and I leapt in. He hurried to
untie the horses as Pierre backed toward the carriage.

The largest of the guards charged
toward him and Pierre squeezed the trigger on his pistol, but nothing happened.
The man was nearly upon him.

Pierre flipped the pistol in his
hand and hit the approaching guard with the handle. His attacker was large and
thick, with fists that swung like hammers, so that hit did little to stop him.

Raising my pistol, I aimed it at
the man. He and Pierre kept moving, dancing around each other, searching for a
weak spot to hit. Blowing out a frustrated breath, my eyes stayed trained on
them. When the large man lunged for Pierre, and Pierre ducked out of the way, I
fired my pistol. The ball struck his shoulder.

Pierre jumped up; his eyes
ablaze, and I knew why. If he had happened to stand up, I would have hit him
instead of the guard. Pierre was always telling me that I took too many risks.
This day I agreed with him.

Arnaud climbed into the carriage
as Pierre scrambled onto the box seat and whipped the horses into motion.
Arnaud jerked the door closed as the carriage lurched forward and made haste
down the dirt road.

It took only twenty minutes to
reach Charleston, and when the carriage finally slowed, we were at the port of
Charleston. Seeing it brought on painful memories of Jack that I had been
trying to keep at bay; thoughts of the night that we spent together in a
warehouse. I did not know that I was crying until I felt the hot tears slide
down my cheeks.

We passed Samuel Mason’s
warehouse, but the man was not in sight, nor did I expect to see him. His
future brother had been killed only hours earlier. A silent sob shook me.
Arnaud said not a word, nor did he look at me, but his hand reached over and
tucked a handkerchief into my hand. The men in Arnaud’s family were not much on
speaking, but they had always been some of my greatest supporters.

Seeing General Harvey’s ship
anchored and awaiting us, my heart sped forth as my stomach twisted. For a
hesitant moment, I thought he might be waiting for me. Then I remembered that
he could not be in Charleston with the Phantoms searching for him.

When Pierre tried to guide me
toward the ship, I pulled away from his hand. Standing in the midst of the
bustle of sailors and dock workers, my gaze was searching the port. For one
weak minute I allowed hope to fill me that Jack was not truly dead, that he
would come to rescue me as he had so many times before.

“I cannot leave him, Pierre. I
must go see; I must know for certain that Jack is gone,” I said, ending in a
whisper.

“Ma
belle
,
to stay is to risk your life. Master Jack would not want that.”

No, Jack would have told me to
run, and he would find me as he had done for the past year.

It took both Pierre and Arnaud to
persuade me to board the ship, and when it set sail, my mind raved at me that I
was making a mistake. When I saw Bess Martin standing at the water’s edge, I
knew it.

She was with Samuel Mason and
Leopold Perry on the dock, watching me as we sailed away. Bess was gesturing
wildly at Sam, but he restrained her, pulling her against his chest, his gaze
never leaving my ship—me. They blamed me for Jack’s death, as I blamed myself,
but in truth there was someone else to blame. Someone else who had been at
fault for the last seven years.

Turning to where Pierre stood
behind me, watching me cautiously, I said, “Take me to General Harvey, for he
and I have a score to settle.”

JACK

Guinevere’s smiling face was before me,
but why was it so unseasonably hot where we were? Tiny beads of perspiration
felt as if they were making patterns down my forehead, from my eyes.

Reaching out to grasp Guinevere’s hand,
there was nothing there. As I swung about, searching for her, a bright light
cast upon my face, almost as if trying to burn through me. Grimacing at the brilliance,
a force of nigh unbearable fire burst in my shoulder, but the only sound that
came from me was a slight moan.

Somewhere around me there was a faint
yet annoying scratching sound that teased my ears, and wiped away the haze of
sleep surrounding me.  For a moment, I lay completely still, unsure of
where I was or what had happened to me. When a creak echoed through the
otherwise silent chamber, I opened my eyes.

My heart jolted in my chest bringing on
a wall of fire as an unknown man stood over me. The hair on my neck and arms
prickled, and my head thundered. The man’s thick head was bent over me. His
brown eyes narrowed as his wicked intent twisted his ugly face.

As his right hand rose, the gleam of his
knife sent panic down my body, cutting off my breaths when he plunged the blade
toward my chest.

My hand flew up and wrapped around his
wrist, my entire body tensing as I fought to keep the knife away. My elbow
locked as my forearm shook against his strength. I tried to raise my other
hand, but could not move it above a few inches from the blanket that was tucked
around me. The tip of the knife was only an inch from my chest. My strength was
diminishing. He was seconds away from piercing my skin.

Guinevere’s face, the way I last saw
her, flashed in my mind. The fear that was there, not just in her but in me,
the helplessness, the knowledge that there was nothing we could do to save each
other. When I was shot, and my body fell, all of my thoughts, all that mattered
was her. If she were here, she would not have been standing aside screeching
for help; she would have been fighting.

A light wind brushed over me from the
open window, and as if she were here commanding me to fight, my strength was
renewed, enough to lift my upper body and throw my head against my attacker’s
head.

It was enough of an impact to force him
to retreat a step. I needed to use it to my advantage, to get the knife, but my
vision was filled with black dots, the room was spinning, and my head dropped
back to the pillow like useless weight. I could not raise my hand above my
chest. It was like I was seeing from someone else’s body that I could not
control.