Heart Burn (24 page)

"I already told you I want nothing to do with him." Tate's fingers flexed around the pistol's handle.

The maid shook and tears streamed down her face. She looked as if she'd collapse at any moment. I had to get her away from him.

"Please, Mr. Tate, don't let past hurts stop you from taking this opportunity. You need Langley—"

"I bloody well do not! I have the drug. It's ready, and I know it works, Miss Smith. All I need is to test it on you, and we'll both be cured. Come with me."

His words were like a siren song, calling to the heat within me, luring me closer. I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust him. My head knew that it was madness to let him inject his drug into me, but my heart ached with the need to be cool, to be cured. To live.

Footsteps pounded on the flagstones in the corridor. Whether they belonged to Sylvia or Bollard, Jack or Samuel, I couldn't tell.

Tate heard them too. Sweat dripped from his temples, down beside his ears. His face glowed with it, and I suspected mine did too. He cocked the gun.

"Come here, Miss Smith. Now!"

The sobbing maid pleaded wordlessly with me. I had no choice. I could reason with him once we were away, and he'd calmed down. I stepped closer and allowed him to switch the gun from Maud's temple to mine.

He pushed the cool barrel hard against my hot forehead. "Walk quickly to the door."

I did as ordered, without glancing back. I didn't want to see Tommy torturing himself over his decision to let me go with Tate or not.

Sylvia's startled cry announced her arrival. "Hannah! Hannah! Somebody, stop him!"

As I left with Tate, her sobs were the last thing I heard. They rang in my ears as I sat on the saddle in front of Tate, and it seemed as if they followed us along the drive and out of the Frakingham gate.

CHAPTER 14

I had thought myself relatively unscathed from my time as a prisoner in Lord Wade's attic. I'd never felt like the walls were closing in on me, or that the air was dwindling. I'd gotten through those fifteen years with my mind intact and my confidence unshaken.

Until now.

My sanity was all a lie, an illusion. The memory of those days came crashing back to me as I sat tied to a chair in a hut deep in the woods to the north of Harborough. I remembered all those times I'd stared out of the Windamere attic window, wishing I could fly away into the blue sky. I remembered too the feeling of being smothered in wool. Everywhere, wool.

The weight of those memories now held down my limbs and pressed against my chest, suffocating. I would rather be in that attic than here.

I'd allowed Tate to tie me to the chair, my hands behind my back, even though I told him it wasn't necessary. I wouldn't try to escape. I couldn't. Despite having only one arm, he was too strong for me and too desperate to allow his chance of curing himself escape. Besides, I could never have run far with my leaden legs and the painful wheezing in my chest.

I sat there and tried to control the heat raging inside me. It was stronger than ever, but not the same as when I grew angry. This felt more like I was being consumed, the flames cooking my insides. I thought about Jack's soothing voice, his gentle eyes, but had to force those things from my mind too. Thinking of Jack only made me sadder, and my chest tighter.

Instead, I watched Tate work at the table that served as his workbench in the kitchen of the disused hut. We'd ridden from Frakingham to his hideout without incident, despite the darkness. The horse seemed to know the route through the dense woods well and carefully picked its way over fallen logs and between thick bushes. Tate had spoken very little on the ride, only confirming that he'd been lucky when he saw Jack and Samuel leave.

I closed my eyes and sucked in air. It cooled me a little and soothed my fractured nerves. I wiped my damp cheeks on my shoulder and tried to focus on Tate and not my captivity. I could not escape, but I had a voice and a promise from Langley.

"You could have made things much easier on yourself if you'd simply accepted that Langley would work with you," I told him.

He opened a wooden box, but I couldn't see the contents. He didn't answer. Was he ignoring me, or lost in his own world now that he was among his instruments?

"Why won't you work with him?" I pressed. "Surely two minds are better than one."

"Not when one of those minds is slow."

I clicked my tongue. With my hands tied, it was the only way to show my frustration with his and Langley's squabbling. "He's not slow and you know that, Mr. Tate. He's clever, but he's cleverer when he's working with you. That's a fact."

"He betrayed me once. More than once. He'll have no scruples doing so again."

"Don't be absurd. Whatever happened between you in the past is irrelevant."

"You're as stupid as he is." He turned around, a glass syringe in hand. It was filled with a clear liquid. "August Langley is a liar and a thief. He has no morals."

"That's not true. He cares about Jack and Sylvia, and me too. He doesn't want me to die, Mr. Tate, and I doubt he wants you to either. He's not entirely heartless. Talk to him and you'll realize it too."

He came to stand in front of me and lowered the syringe to my jaw. One small move and he could jab it into my throat. "I tried talking to him years ago. He laughed in my face."

My resolve to calm him down and make him see sense was fading fast. His hatred of Langley ran deep, perhaps too deep for me to convince him to let it go. "I know you loved him," I ventured. There could be no gain without risk, and from the raw pain in Tate's eyes, I was taking a very big risk indeed. "I know he betrayed you with Bollard. But are past hurts enough of a reason to jeopardize your life?"

"It's
your
life I risk, not mine. Listen to me, Miss Smith. August's betrayal with Bollard is only part of the problem. It's the icing on the cake, or, if you prefer, the lesion symptomatic of an underlying cancer. The far greater betrayal was when he tricked me into receiving much less than I deserved for the drug we created together. I thought we were going to split everything in half, but found out too late that the papers he made me sign had certain caveats that locked me out of the greatest portion of funds. So you see," he said with a mocking smile, "I don't trust him. He'll come in here, pretending to work with me, and then he'll take my cure and sell it to the Society. I wouldn't even trust him to inject me with it beforehand."

"He would never do that."

"You don't know him like I do, Miss Smith."

"Clearly not. But I do know him
now
. He's changed. He'll be fair with you, I promise. Just put down the syringe."

"Miss Smith." He spoke my name as if it were a weight he wanted to shove off once and for all. "I'm hot and tired. My time is close. Without a cure I have only a day or two left."

He did indeed look hotter than the last time I'd seen him in the Red Lion. He wore neither waistcoat nor tie, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. "I don't have the energy or time for Langley's games." He primed the needle. A squirt of the liquid dropped onto the floor and soaked into the boards. "Besides, it's not necessary to include him. I have the cure. He doesn't. I don't need him anymore."

"How can you be sure that's the cure if you haven't tested it?"

"Would you like to see my calculations?" He jerked his head at the table where papers were spread out and notebooks lay open. He laughed.

"You know I won't understand it."

"Then I'm sorry for you and your small brain, Miss Smith. You'll just have to trust me."

My stomach heaved. I wanted to throw up. Perhaps that would make him stop pressing the needle to my exposed arm.

I searched for the anger inside, but it was buried too deeply beneath fear and hopelessness. "Please, Mr. Tate. Please, be reasonable. He's different now, I assure you. He won't betray you again." My voice was shrill. Hysterical.

I shook my arm as best as I could, and he pulled the needle away.

It was only a teasing delay. "Hold still," he growled. "Moving will only succeed in making it hurt more."

I began to cry. Great, gasping sobs sucked even more precious air from my lungs, and I coughed so hard it felt like my insides were being brought up. It made it impossible for Tate to inject me.

He set the syringe down on the table and slapped my face with the back of his hand. My head buzzed. My cheek hurt. But I quieted. In a sense, I woke up.

I watched Tate pick up the syringe again and press it to my arm. I felt the bite of the needle as it pierced my skin, the heavy weight of anticipation as he emptied the contents into my arm.

The liquid was cold. I'd never felt anything like it. It slithered along my veins, up my arm to my shoulder, numbing. If the cold meant I was cured, then the drug had worked.

He removed the needle, and the coldness went with it.

"Well?" I prompted, searching his face for any sign of what was supposed to happen next.

"Now we wait and observe."

Wait
. God, how I hated that word.

Tate pulled up the only other chair in the hut and sat, the pistol in his lap. He watched me intently, peered into my eyes. "How do you feel?" He sounded remarkably clinical for someone whose life depended on the outcome of this test. Perhaps, like me, he was resigned to fate. It was too late to tweak the drug now.

"Still hot," I said. "The drug's coldness didn't last. It's as if my heat overpowered it."

"Fuck!"

Dread punched its fist through my chest. "You…expected more?"

"It should have worked." He shot to his feet and stabbed the pistol barrel onto the open notebook. "It should have bloody
worked
."

I tried to swallow, but couldn't. My throat was too tight. Something was happening. Heat rose from the pit of my stomach up to my chest like smoke. Searing. Stifling. It stole the air from my lungs, wrapped itself around my insides like a burning rope.

"Mr. Tate." I tried to shout, but it came out a whisper. "Mr. Tate…help. I'm burning up."

He took one look at my face, and I knew from the horror in his eyes that it must be dangerously red.

"It hasn't worked, has it?"

He plopped down on the chair and buried his head in his hand. "No, Miss Smith. It hasn't worked. You'll be dead very soon. I'm sorry."

Ordinarily I would be a puddle of pitiful tears hearing that, but I concentrated on fighting the heat. I focused all my energy inwards, tried to conjure cool things in my mind, like swimming in the lake with Jack.

My efforts were useless. My fingertips were hot, perhaps even on fire. I couldn't tell, bound as they were behind me.

My blood throbbed between my ears, so loud that I didn't hear the door opening. It wasn't until Tate's head jerked up that I realized someone had entered the hut.

I heard their shouts. I recognized Jack's voice and Samuel's. Accusing. Cursing. Demanding to know what had happened. Somebody untied me, but had to jump back as I burned him. Samuel, I realized, as his face came into focus. He blew on his hands and shook them out.

"She's on fire," he said. "Too hot for me."

I caught a glimpse of Jack's face as he came to my side. There was no sign of relief at finding me, no worry either. It was as if he wore a mask, his eyes shining like two hard gems within it.

He began to untie me. My heat couldn't combust him unless there was desire between us, and there was nothing like it in him now. He was all fierce determination and calculating anger. I did not envy Tate in the least once Jack directed that wrath at him. 

He never got the chance. Tate stood, the pistol in his hand. He pointed it at Jack. Cocked it.

Jack's head whipped around at the
click
. Samuel swore, as did someone else. Myer, I think. Tate pulled the trigger, but Jack dove out of the way at the last moment. The bullet bit into the floor and lodged in the boards.

Tate pointed the gun at me. My hands were still tied to the chair although Jack had got my legs free. But it was useless. I couldn't move out of the way. I was as limp as a rag doll. And hot. So damnably hot.

A fireball shot past my ear, singing my hair. It slammed into Tate's shoulder. He dropped the gun and screamed in pain. He slapped frantically at his shirt and was able to put out the flames.

Too late. His skin had blistered and burned off in patches. He stared down at himself, as if he'd never seen anything like it. I stared too, riveted by horror and shock. He should not have burned. Neither he nor I nor Jack should have been affected by flames. Yet Jack's fireball had scorched him. The smell of seared flesh was unmistakable.

Jack stood at my side, still staring at Tate. His mask had fallen away. He looked as horrified as Tate. He'd burned someone, something he'd sworn never to do again. The guilt must have returned, and the memories of that time he'd killed a man by using his fire to save Charity.

He shuddered and covered his face with his hands. I wanted to hold him, tell him it was all right, but I could do nothing. I could not even find my voice.

Samuel edged closer to the gun lying at Tate's feet.

But Tate got it first. He directed it at Samuel. "Get back!"

Samuel stayed still, hands in the air. "Jack," he said.

Jack stood there, doing nothing, not looking at Tate or anyone else. He stared down at his hands, his shoulders stooped as if he'd given up.

"Bloody hell, Jack!" Samuel cried. "Fire another one!"

Tate shifted the gun to me. "I'll put her out of her misery," he said. "She's dying anyway. It'll be kinder than—"

Jack's fireball hit him square in the chest and blasted him across the room. He slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor. Dead. There could be no doubt. His body and clothing were alight, the fire quickly consuming him. The putrid smell of burning flesh grew stronger, clogging my throat and nose.

Jack rubbed his hands down his face. When he drew them away, it was as if the horror had been wiped off. The normal Jack had returned.

He bent to untie me. "Hannah?" he whispered. "Hannah, please…fight it."