Soulbound (Darkest London 6)

Adam simply had to get Eliza to the GIM first. They entered the hot chaos of the Rag Fair.

Chapter Fourteen

Life and noise surged around Eliza like the incoming tide. She’d never been in the presence of so many people at once. They surrounded her, calling out prices, shouting to one another, laughing and carousing. It was a discordant song that had her head reeling. The fair was an open-air market, hemmed in on both sides by buildings. Canopied stalls lined the walls and, along the ground, vendors had set up areas by simply placing their wares upon tatty blankets. And everywhere, people were purchasing old and very worn clothes.

Adam gave her arm a squeeze. The pair of demons he’d beaten to a pulp were now healed and snaking through the crowd to close in on them.

“Bloody hell,” Adam muttered, his limping gate growing worse.

Eliza slowed and reached for her pocket.

Which caused Adam to stumble. “What are you doing, woman?”

“Hold a moment,” Eliza murmured, and before he could protest her stalling, she pulled the gun from her pocket and raised it in the air. “Home rule! Free Ireland!” Her voice bellowed out over the crowded streets, and then she shot the gun in rapid succession.

The crowd scattered like pigeons, shouting and crying.

“Christ,” Adam snarled, grabbing Eliza’s arm and wrenching it down to hide the gun. “Don’t dally when you’ve started a riot.”

Already, a wave of humans, trying to flee, was rushing toward them. Adam pulled her around a coffee monger’s cart just before it toppled under the onslaught.

“It will slow those bastards down, at the least,” Eliza said, bracing Adam up once more.

“Aye, and trample us to boot.”

“It seemed a good idea —”

Something large and hard slammed into her shoulder, tearing her from Adam’s grasp and sending her reeling.

“Adam!”

A rotund man lumbered past as a swarm of people swallowed Adam up. Eliza struggled to get back to him, but it was no use, she was swept along in the opposite direction. Elbows and shoulders knocked her about, and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. Eliza shoved her way towards the walls that made up the market’s main square. With a great push against a young man’s side, she stumbled into a small alleyway.

Sweating, she leaned against a wall and tried to ease her breathing. Adam was out there, hurt and possibly trampled. The magnitude of how much that distressed her was shocking and made her throat ache. For all their strife, Eliza had felt oddly safe and right knowing that he was in the world, that he lived somewhere, even when she hadn’t been near him. If he were to die, if the golden light of his soul were to go dim, she’d be bereft.

The wrongness of his demise struck her to the core, and her chest began to quake with the mad urge to cackle like a harpy.

“No,” she whispered, terror clutching her heart. She knew that laugh. Hot, acid tears burned in her eyes. “No, no.” Adam could not be dead. She would not laugh at his death. A small snicker escaped her. Gods, but she was deranged. Why did she laugh near death? She hated herself for it.

A hard hand grasped her arm and spun Eliza around.

“Adam…”

The man looking down at her was not Adam. Tall and wide with bulk, and rumpled beneath a battered coat, the man had the eyes of a killer. The sort of man who took joy preying on the weak. Eliza had spent far too much of her life either facing or avoiding such men.

Their gazes clashed, his flat and cold. Eliza glared back, putting every ounce of her will behind the look. “Who are you?”

“The poor sod assigned to watch your arse.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Lord Mellan had me follow you and see that you don’t muck things up.” The man sneered, revealing a row of brown teeth. “Looks like you have already.” He gave a jerk with his head toward the market where people were calming down but still shouting. “You weren’t supposed to kill the man until he led you to the sword.”

The mention of Adam sent a bolt of urgency through Eliza, and she wrenched free of the man’s brutal grip. “You’re human.” Were he fae, she wouldn’t have been able to get free of him, nor would he have smelled like rotten tobacco.

“Well I know, mot.” The man shrugged. “Lord Mellan suspected this Adam bloke might notice a fae.”

She straightened her spine. “I have to go. As you say, I’ve a job to finish, and it won’t get done sitting here with you.” She wanted far away from this man. “If you’ll excuse me.”

His weathered face split into a jack-o’-lantern’s grin, complete with naught but two yellowed teeth hanging from the maw of his mouth. Hot, fetid breath brushed her cheeks. “Why the rush, lamb? The GIM Maker will keep. I’ve seen to it.”

“He’ll keep?” Disgust warred with fear. “What did you do?”

“Slipped me shiv into a pair of demon hearts. They won’t be chasing him.” The man laughed, a rusty, broken sound. “As for your wayward mark, he’s likely lying in the gutter where the crowd pushed him.”

A sharp breath left her, and she started forward, intent upon finding Adam and helping him.

The man’s hand slapped down on her shoulder. “Hold your water. Spare ol’ Gus ’ere a piece, eh?”

A familiar feeling inside of Eliza broke loose, quaking like an earth tremor. That dark, ugly, hidden spot within her wanted to reel this tumescent insect of a man into her web and suck him dry.