Kate Cross - Touch of Steel

The only sound louder than the breath panting from her lungs was that of blood dripping onto the toe of her boot.

Claire Brooks crouched behind the grimy chimney stack and pressed her hand to her side. Wet seeped through the boning of her corset and the thin wool of her coat, warming her chilled fingers.

Her lungs burned and her gun hand was cramped, but she refused to set down her pistol. She refused to give u<���Ǖp the chase. It would take more than a hole in her side to stop her now.

Across the roof, she heard Howard scurrying away like the rat he was. He could not escape, not when she had already chased him across five countries. Robert’s death could not go unavenged.

Gritting her teeth against the ungodly burning in her side, she braced her shoulder against the sooty brick and leaned hard as she dug her boot heel into the rough stone. She pushed herself to her feet, biting her lip to keep from crying out.

She lifted her gun, blinked the sweat out of her eyes, took aim and fired. The dark figure running toward the edge of the roof ducked as the aetheric blast sent bits of brick scattering near his shoulder.

Damn it. A miss. If her vision weren’t so blurry from sweat trickling into her eyes, she would have gotten him.

Still clutching her side—blood soaking her fingers now—she ran after him, every strike of her heels a new lesson in pain.

You’re not going to die just yet, she told herself. Not until you know for certain you’re going to take that bastard with you. He dies first.

She thought of Robert, of how there hadn’t been enough of him left for her to have a proper funeral for him, how he’d been betrayed by the organization to which he had pledged his life. The thought of seeing him again, whether in heaven or hell, wasn’t what pushed her forward. What kept her running despite the sheer agony of it was that she had sworn to send Howard to his judgment first.

Moonlight cut through the clouds as Howard leaped from the edge of the roof to the next. Claire didn’t hesitate, her stride easily bridging the narrow gap between buildings. A shot whizzed past her ear, and she pitched herself downward. She hit the roof hard, falling to her knees.

“Arrhh!” Lights danced before her eyes as agony ripped through her. Bile rose in her throat as darkness threatened to claim her. Ignoring the smell of burned hair, she swallowed and staggered to her feet. Howard was putting too much distance between them; he was already at the opposite side.

She raised her pistol and fired again. The sound cracked the night like the lash of a whip. Howard made a guttural cry. She’d hit the bastard. A grim smile tugged on her lips as she forced her legs to move faster. Her battered knees protested, but they did as she willed. Howard had stumbled when she shot him, and she was closing the gap between them.

This time he hesitated at the edge of the roof. He clutched his shoulder as he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. Smoke drifted upward from between his fingers, the fabric of his coat smoldering from the blast. His face was different than the last time she had seen him, but then his face was different every time. He was a master of disguise, and Claire doubted that even the higher-ups at the Company knew his true countenance. When she killed him, she would peel back the layers of his disguise and see the real him for herself.

He raised his hand—she had winged his gun arm—and waved before dropping over the ledge.

Claire froze, but only for a second. What the hell? She ran to the edge, her gaze searching the distance between the ledge and the next building. There waherng. Thes no sign of him. Realization crashed through her skull just as something closed around her ankle. She looked down.

How could she be so stupid?

Stanton Howard grinned up at her from where he hung on a crude rope ladder. Just a split second before he yanked her off balance, she realized it was his hand wrapped around her leg. She raised her gun, but it was too late—she was already plummeting toward the alley below.

She twisted her body so that her back was to the ground, raised the gun at the man climbing back to the roof and fired. He jerked, and—

She hit with teeth-jarring force. Pain embraced her entire body, and everything went black.

She woke up to the low murmur of nearby voices. Fog swam thick in her brain, and her limbs were heavy—almost as heavy as her tongue felt in her mouth.

Not dead then.

A dull, faint ache radiated across the back of her skull. Her back was sore and her side burned, but none of these complaints bothered her as much as not knowing the location of her gun.

Opium. They had given her opium—whoever “they” were. They had drugged her and taken her weapon—her clothes, too. Damn it, that meant she was in a hospital.

Why wasn’t she dead? Howard couldn’t have allowed her to live out of the kindness of his traitorous heart. She remembered falling toward the street . . . a carriage stopping below her . . . men with guns appearing just as she yanked her body around. That carriage had stopped her fall. It had saved her.

Opening her eye took every ounce of strength she possessed. The room was a blur of motion and colors, and her lids felt as though they’d been lined with sand.

“She’s waking up.” The voice was female, the accent a strange, melodic mix of Irish and that of some exotic land.

Slowly, her eyes righted themselves and began to focus. Claire blinked. Standing before her were a dusky-skinned woman so strikingly beautiful she probably had very few female friends and a tall, stern-looking man with a very British nose. The two of them looked very official, but neither of them had the constabulary look.

“How do you feel?” the woman inquired.

“Like I was shot and fell off a roof,” Claire replied. The words came out as “thot” and “rooth.”

The woman actually smiled a little. “I imagine so.” She came closer to the side of the bed. Claire watched warily as she poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the tray of a small, squat automaton, its engine whirling with a sound much like a kitten’s purr. Then she bent at the waist and wound a large key on the side of the bed. A few seconds later the bed gave a tiny but still-painful lurch. Slowly, as the mechanism ground into use, gears churning and clicking, the upper part of the bed rose, until Claire was almost upright. There was an audible “click,” and then all went still.

The cool lip of the cup pressed against Claire’s parched lips. “Drink wips. “,” the woman instructed.

Claire did not need to be told twice. She gulped greedily, closing her eyes in pleasure as the cold water ran over her thick tongue and down her parched throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted anything so delicious.

And then she realized it wasn’t the opium that made it impossible to lift her arms—her wrists were strapped to the bed frame.

When the cup ran dry, the woman refilled it and held it for her once again. This time as she drank, Claire allowed her gaze to roam around the sterile ward. Her heart threatened to pound, but she kept herself calm. She’d been in worse situations before.