Gilded Hearts (The Shadow Guild Series) (27 page)

“I remember trying to stay awake to hear them.”

“But I think… that night I found something.”

“John?” The horror and sadness in her voice were a perfect duet to his emotions.

“I suspect so. I wish I could remember.”

Piper lay down beside him, and they both rolled to face each other. It was like what they’d done the night before Samuel had fled, sharing an intimacy without touching. Like then, he wanted to reach out and run his fingers through her hair. Kiss her lips, nose, cheeks. He wanted to stretch her out as he had the other night and make love to her.

She lifted her hand and touched his face, the gentle scrape of her nails against his skin making him shiver. “Sam?”

“Yes.”

“When I woke from the memory wipe that David did, I knew I had lost so much from the past while.”

Turning his face, he placed a kiss to the palm of her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does. I keep feeling as if I’m forgetting something important. Life altering, even.”

I’m not strong enough.
“What’s important is that you have the rest of your life to make new memories. They’ll never be able to take anything else from you again.”

“We were together.” There was no question or shock from her. Like she’d known all along and had dealt with what it all meant. “I remember your scent was on the pillow when I woke.”

He hadn’t wanted to leave her. There was always something getting in the way, stopping them from taking what they wanted. “We were.”

“I’m not a part of the guild any longer. I’m free to make my own choices.”

He held his body as still as he could. “What are you saying?”

“Before I arrived here, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. But from the moment I heard you downstairs, I knew there was only one option. I want to be with you. The rest will work itself out.”

Piper pushed him flat to his back and straddled his hips. The thin shift rose up with the motion, exposing her knees and part of her thighs. Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she leaned down and placed a single kiss to the tip of his nose.

“We’ve kissed?” She rubbed her nose across his lips.

“Yes.”

“We’ve made love?” She ground her pussy down on his still-clothed cock.

“Yes.”

“Will you do both to me again?”

“God, yes.”

Her fingers shook as she pulled his belt open and worked free the fastenings of his trousers. Samuel didn’t dare move, enjoying the glimpse of this new, bolder version of Pip. It took her longer than it would have him, but she finally freed him and together they worked his trousers and pants down his legs. They caught on his boots, but he wasn’t about to stop to pull them off.

Piper yanked her shift off and tossed it behind them, a mirror of what they’d done during their previous encounter here. But this time was different. She’d remember every caress, every hitch of her breathing and his. The past didn’t matter, the damned Guild Masters and their rules didn’t matter. They were going to take this, take what they’d both wanted for years, the rest of the world be dammed.

She didn’t bother to undo all of the buttons of his shirt, settling for pushing it up to his nipples. When she leaned in and swiped her tongue across one budded peak, Samuel groaned and bucked up.

“You have a wicked mouth.” He pushed his fingers into her hair and pulled it free from its loose bindings. “Someday I want to feel it on my cock.”

It was Piper’s turn to groan. “What do I do?”

“Lift up a bit.” He reached between them and guided his cock into her. “This might be tender, but there shouldn’t be pain or blood.”

Piper sucked in a breath. “I’m not a virgin.” As if the realization had only now struck her.

“No. You’re mine.”

With one swift thrust, Samuel impaled her on his shaft. The ripple of her inner muscles around his cock was as tight and strong as they’d been that first time. The difference was Piper’s reaction. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back as she began to ride his cock. Grinding down, he could feel her excitement against his skin, dampening with each thrust. They were connected, one body moving, living, loving. There was no Annie in her head directing her actions.

Only Pip and Sam as one.

Her breasts fit into his palms perfectly, and he squeezed. Her hips stuttered as she leaned into his touch, her nails digging into his shoulders where she leaned for support. Ghosting his touch lower, he pressed a thumb to her wet folds, rubbing her clit until her hips lost their easy, steady rhythm.

“What are you doing?” She bit down on her lip. “Sam?”

“I’m going to make you feel amazing. Better than any pleasure you’ve known.”

“God.”

His balls tingled and he pressed up into her harder, knowing neither of them would last long. But that no longer mattered. This wasn’t a goodbye. This was the beginning of their lives together.

“Sam.” She gasped. “I feel… I…”

“Yes. Let it come, sweetheart.”

Keeping his touch on her clit, he sat up as much as he was able and latched onto her nipple. He flicked his tongue in time with the press of his thumb, hoping it would be enough. Piper’s moans deepened as she leaned all of her weight on him.

“God, Sam!” Her body spasmed uncontrollably, sweat covered her skin, and her eyes glowed in the dim light.

Unable to wait, he flipped them around so she was pressed flat against the mattress. There was no holding back the flood of want, lust, and love. She was his, and nothing would ever tear them apart again. Pounding into her, Samuel wasn’t even aware of his orgasm approaching until the pleasure overwhelmed his senses.

One moment he was filling her with his seed, and the next he’d collapsed onto her body. She hugged him, arms and legs wrapped around him, refusing to let him shift his weight from her. Her lips were soft as they mapped out the skin beneath his ear and along his jaw.

“Think they know we’ve reconciled?” Her whispered words tickled against his ear.

“I think half of New London knows. We weren’t exactly subtle.”

Piper moved with him as he reached down and struggled to pull his boots free of his feet. They landed to the floor with a hollow
thunk
, taking his trousers and pants with them.

“That’s better. I prefer to sleep in the nude.”

“Something I’ll have to get used to if I choose to spend the night with you.” She smiled and brushed the hair from his face. “I should warn you that I get cold.”

“Never again. I will keep you pressed against me, keeping you warm.”

They must have dozed for a time, because the next thing Samuel realized, the sweat had dried and he was chilled. He became aware of a noise in the hallway, a banging followed by a muffled shuffling.
Dammit, David.
He dropped his head to the mattress.

“What’s that?” Piper shifted closer beside him.

“David no doubt. In the morning we’ll go to my flat. At the very least we’ll be able to sleep uninterrupted.”

Another bang, louder and closer this time. Aiko’s voice echoed in the distance and the sensation of panic radiated out, even over this distance. If this was another explosion in the lab, they might need his help. “I better go see.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“No. I know you don’t remember, but this happened last time as well. David loves to run his experiments at night. I’ll be back shortly.”

He got to his feet and had managed to pull on his pants and trousers when there was a knock on their door. “I’m up, Timmons. What the hell did he do now?”

His fingers wrapped around the knob and he began to twist it when the door flew open, knocking him to the floor. His head impacted with the hardwood, making his vision swim and pain fill his brain.

“What the fuck, Timmons?”

Samuel blinked rapidly, not fully registering Piper’s screams as he stared at the man coming toward him. It wasn’t Timmons. The man wore a long black coat, knee-high black boots, and a tall, wide-brimmed hat.

Jack grinned down at him. “Hello, Sammy-boy.”

Samuel couldn’t move, his body immobilized by shock. “Jack?”

Finally able to see him in full light, Samuel took in the visage of a killer. Jack’s skin was too white to be simply described as pale. His thin lips had the appearance of being stained blood red. His coat concealed a gaunt frame, skeletal wrists, long gangly legs. Wisps of white-blond hair floated around his shoulders and face. To say he had an otherworldly appearance was an insult to ghosts and ghouls.

Jack was a hellish creature all his own.

With a bow, Jack removed his hat, his pink irises fixed on Samuel. “In the flesh.” He pulled a knife from behind his back as he tossed the hat aside. “Hello, Pip. So Sammy-boy finally figured out how to work his cock, eh? I have to say I was worried the two of you would never get to experience carnal pleasures together before you died.”

Jack grabbed Sam by the foot and yanked him closer. He fell upon him, pressing the knife to the scab across his throat.

“I heard you’ve been lookin’ for me.” His breath was rancid, and his yellowed teeth appeared too large for his mouth. “Always looking, our Sammy-boy, and never seeing.”

“Jack.” Shit, it was him. Though the years and the machine had changed him, Samuel recognized the shape of his nose and the cut of his chin, the familiar sharp intensity of his gaze. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what? That Constantine stumbled into my chamber and set me free? Do you know what he said to me? ‘What the hell are you?’” Jack’s mocking tone turned Samuel’s stomach. “It wasn’t out of compassion that he pulled me from the machine. It was scientific curiosity.”

“Jack?”

When Jack looked up at Piper, Samuel struggled to throw him off. The knife blade bit into his flesh instantly, sending a fresh trickle of blood across his throat as it reopened the wound.

“Don’t. Move.”

“Jack, please don’t hurt him.”

“I wasn’t planning on doing any such thing, Miss Smith. You see, Sammy-boy here needs to learn a few facts of his life first. He needs to learn that you can’t be given everything, every advantage, every benefit, only to throw it back in the faces of the people who loved you.” Jack squeezed Sam’s chin and jaw with his free hand, pressing his skull against the floor, the knife enforcing Sam’s compliance. “They plugged me into the fucking machine. Used my body to fuel my brain, and used my brain to run, record, destroy every memory of every extraction. Because all those memories, all those extractions, they had to go somewhere when they came out of the archivists. And I was that somewhere. Their secret, their oubliette. Pain and anguish and hate and dying, over and over and over! I never got to forget. But you forgot, didn’t you? Forgot all about me! You. Left.
Me!
”

“Is anyone here?”

The Archives couldn’t be alive. He understood how they worked, the way machines hummed and thrived, bits and bobs clicking together in a beautiful symphony. He was letting his imagination get the better of him.

Ignoring the way his stomach turned, Samuel made his way into the chamber. There was another archway, the path where the majority of the light and sounds came. One little look. He’d take a peek and then leave before one of the Administrators showed up. That would be his luck, and this time he didn’t have the excuse of youthful curiosity in his favor.

Just one look and then he’d leave.

Jack’s fingers bore down until Samuel thought his jaw might crack from the pressure. Samuel couldn’t speak, forced to hold still and stare into the eyes of an insane man.

Somehow, Piper was able to keep her voice calm. He was helpless to stop her as she slid to the floor, wearing only her shift. “It was the Guild Masters who did that to you. Samuel didn’t know you were there. None of us did.”

“Of course
you
didn’t know. The archivists are nothing more than whores that the guild uses and tosses aside when they get too old. At least the whores I killed knew they were getting fucked. If you come even an inch closer I will slit his throat.”

“I won’t.” She held her hands up and scooted backward until she was pressed against the bed. “You don’t have to do this. The women are dead. Constantine is dead, and the Cult of Osiris disbanded. You can leave here and go anywhere you want. You don’t need to kill him.”

Samuel wished he could see her face, brush away the tears that he knew were on her cheeks. Instead he was forced to watch the war of emotions raging inside Jack. There were no tears in his demonic eyes, only blinding hate.

“Where would I go?” He cocked his head and drew his face closer to Samuel’s. “Should I go in search of my family? Show up on their doorstep and say, ‘Hello Sammy-boy. I’m your twin brother. Wanna come play?’”

The air was rancid, clogging his lungs the farther in he went. The shadows were bisected by strands of red and blue lights, stretching out across the floor. He was aware of the giant chair before him, but he couldn’t quite make himself look up, as if his body knew once he saw what was before him, everything would be over.

“Sammy-boy. You found me.”

He thought he was going to be sick.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“John?” He couldn’t look up. No, no, no, so bad. Eyes down.

John’s voice was soft, little more than a whisper. “I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”

“No!” Samuel did look then, stepping closer on instinct.

The chair filled most of the room. Its black metal blended in to the darkness around them, its outline faint. John’s thin, pale face was illuminated by a bank of glowing cathodes before him. The colors would flare for a moment before dying out, only to be replaced with new ones.

There was so much red light…

He couldn’t leave him here. “I need to get you out of here.”

“Oh good.” John cocked his head, a limited movement given how he was secured. “You’re finally here to take my place?”

“What?” Everything around him fell away, leaving Samuel numb. “
What?
No!”

“Oh yes.” Jack leaned in and placed an open-mouth kiss to his cheek. “Did you think you came to the Archives by chance? That you were yet another discarded waif to be shoved into the service of the Guild Masters? Oh, no. You and I are special. We were
bred
for this, Sammy. Our father was one of them. Our mother was nothing more than an unlucky whore he fucked until he got us on her, and then killed when she was done nursing us. She only had one special thing about her. Blood. They needed the perfect combination, the perfect mix for their machine. And they got lucky the first time out. Twins. First me, then you. An heir and a spare. Lucky, lucky spare.”

They both watched as Jack stood up, letting the heavy coat slip from his arms. Yanking the shirt off over his head, Jack stood there naked from the waist up, linen-white except for the black ankh tattoo that stood out boldly against the pale skin of his forearm.

“Oh my God.” Piper’s whisper might as well have been a shout.

Embedded in Jack’s chest were three large grommets. One was infected all around where skin met steel, angry-looking red streaks spidering out, crisscrossing along the ashen skin. The flesh next to the grommet had begun to slough off in places and oozed a greenish ichor with a smell beyond foul.

“They fed me through this one. I still remember how much it hurt when they pierced my stomach.” He turned to the side, revealing a complex network of plugs and small hoses. It looked like the inner workings of one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s machines. “Then they did something so I couldn’t feel that pain anymore when they did the rest. So much more. Wires, tubes connected to my muscles. Shocks and chemicals. Even I don’t know everything they pumped into me over the years. It was supposed to keep my body functional, so my brain could do their work, but it also made me strong.”

Jack turned his body so they could see a socket at the base of his neck.

“This one… oh, this was a special one. I heard, saw, experienced
everything
through this. I
was
the machine, once this was drilled out and plugged in. Every memory that got extracted passed through me into the dark. Bits and pieces of them got caught, though, so much flotsam and jetsam.” Jack hit his head with his fist. “No clearing my memory, none of that for me, because I was just supposed to be the conduit. But the conduit got all dammed up. I can still hear them, begging and pleading when I’m alone in the dark. All still in there.”

It was impossible for Samuel to speak. Tears clogged his throat, flooded his eyes. Pain tore at his stomach. He had a brother, true family. All those years he’d been lost, dreaming of finding someone, but when he’d finally gained a family he’d fallen into a nightmare. He’d imagined being taken from his mother because of poverty, neglect. He hadn’t considered that the truth might be far more horrific than his worst imaginings.

“What?” Samuel froze, unable to come any closer. “No, I’m here to save you.”

John’s laugh turned his stomach even more than the smell. “It’s the same thing, Sammy-boy. The machine needs a brain to close the circuit. A special brain. Special blood. Mine or yours.”

“No.”

“Oh yes.”

Samuel took a step backward. “Master Ryerson said you were dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. I’m alive.” The lights flared as John jerked in his seat. “Now get me the fuck out of here.”

He couldn’t do it, live in the darkness. “No.”

“You think you’re going to win this time. You won’t! Get over here and get me out!”

“No.” Samuel stepped back. He couldn’t become the monster he feared so much. “I’ll find help.”

“Don’t you dare leave.”

“I’ll be back.”

Samuel swallowed down the pain and sick, pushed himself up until he was squatting before Jack. Blood flowed down his neck once more. Piper hadn’t moved, but he could tell she was hyperaware of what he was doing. He could feel her alertness, a vibrating pulse of tension behind him.

“Jack.” Samuel had to keep him calm, focused on him, to give Piper a chance to escape. “We can go away now.”

His brother sneered as he released his shirt, letting it fall to cover the horrors of his body. “Do you think me a fool? Your only concern is for your friends, your whore. You don’t care about what happens to poor Jack. You don’t care about the hell I’ve lived through, or what dear old Dad had planned for me. No, no, no, you care more about what I did to those women, the whores who were nothing more than liars and thieves. Information, deceit, sex, it was all the same to them as long as they got their coin. Their lives meant nothing. Tools to be destroyed. That’s what whores are good for, and don’t we just know it?”

Jack’s hand shook as he spoke, and light jittered over the trembling knife blade. His ghastly skin was flushed and his eyes bright, wild. When he stepped toward Piper, Samuel knew his intentions.

“I’d like to believe you’d come away with me, Sammy-boy. That you really want to take some time and spend it with your big brother, but we both know that’s not true. You’ll just run, run away. Like you did before.” Another step and he was between Samuel and Piper. “Oh, Pip, we can go to Canada. They’ll never find us there.” Jack’s high-pitched mocking was followed by a girlish giggle. “Oh no, Sam. We’d never make it. Let’s stay here where it’s safe.
Safe
.”

Jack moved faster than Samuel thought possible, grabbing Piper by the hair. But she’d anticipated the move, rolling away even as Jack’s fingers tangled in her long locks. Samuel pounced, tackling Jack around the middle, sending them both crashing to the floor.

“Run, Pip!”

Pain exploded in his face as Jack landed a punch to his jaw. It wasn’t enough to slow him down, and served only to further fuel his rage. Samuel lashed out, punching and clawing at Jack, not caring if he was hitting flesh, bone, or even the floor. Jack had to be stopped, and he was the only one who could do it.

Jack grabbed Samuel’s wrist in his hands and twisted, flipping Samuel to the floor. Unable to react in time, Samuel couldn’t stop Jack from slamming his face down.

“It’s not going to be that easy, Sammy. You’re not going to be able to walk out of this room and forget.” The knife blade was against his throat once more.

“I never forgot you, John. I would never have left you there if I’d known how to find you.”

“Oh, but you did find me, brother. I saw you.”

“If you walk out that door, I’ll kill you. I don’t know how but I’ll find you and kill you.”

“John, please. Don’t say that.”

“And not just you. Your friends and that little whore you play with. Oh yes, I see you and your precious Pip. I hear you whispering together in the dark.” John started to laugh. “What fun it will be to take her from you. I’ve learned so much being in the chair. How to use a knife, a pistol. Maybe I’ll slice her up.”

“No!” Not Pip. Never her. He’d die himself before he’d let John near her.

Spinning blindly, Samuel stumbled for the door, tripping as he went.