He was not certain anyone heard or not.
“Meg, ye’re fine.” He staggered to his feet, started for the door, but a gunshot in the back of the shop splintered him with panic.Mr. Foxcroft.Shouts lifted, a guttural scream, one Tom knew by heart.
Coughing, smoke stinging his eyes, he lunged outside and eased Meg onto the smooth flagway. He shook as he palmed back her hair. Then smeared the blood. Then probed her neck.
A weak pulse throbbed his fingertips.
Alive.
Barely.
Meg, Meg, my Meg.
“Tommy?” Mrs. Musgrave was already bustling out of the neighboring millinery shop with her cat, and across the street, Mr. Telfner thrust his head out of the stationer’s shop window.
“Lawks, what goes on there?” he yelled, yanking off his nightcap.
“Fire!” Tom stood on knees that jellied. “Get men over here. We need help.” He sprang back toward the door, but gray-haired Mrs. Musgrave hustled in his path.
“Dear boy, you cannot think of going back in there—”
“Stay with Miss Foxcroft.” He darted past her, into the building, and pulled his damp shirt over his nose. The flames had reached the ceiling. The standing clock in the corner was gone. The rear counter black. The brass scales a discolored silver.
He ducked his head and hurtled through the flaming doorway, into a sweltering hall, where Mr. Foxcroft’s bedchamber door stood ajar. A body lay limp across the threshold, the face and neck blood splattered.
No.
Bent backwards over the bed, Mr. Foxcroft screeched out a curse, struggling against the man atop him. A knife flashed. Then plunged.
Tom leaped on the stranger’s back and slung him sideways. They crashed together into a full-length mirror. It toppled over them. Shards everywhere. Puncturing his skin.
Run.He tried to scream the warning, but all that came out was a low grunt as he rolled with the assailant. Pain jabbed in too many places. A fist cracked his jaw. He swung his own.
Blow answered blow like a blinding torrent.
Everything dimmed, black at the corner of his vision—except the shadowed face hovering over him, the smoke constricting his throat, the metallic taste spewing from his mouth and lips.
With raging power, he lunged his forehead into the man’s face. A sickening bash of skulls, then the figure fell back.
Tom pounced on him, hands throttling his throat. He squeezed until veins bulged in the neck, until the eyes bugged wide with a gurgling fear.Meg.Her face, the wretched wounds. He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t stop. For what this beast had done to her, to Mr. Foxcroft—
No.Some vague command, in the recesses of his mind, forced his fingers to uncurl.
He rained down his fist instead, until the figure no longer gasped or pleaded or stirred. Tom’s heart stammered as he stood. Numbness—confusion—chilled the blood in his veins as he glanced about the room. Hot orange and red light flickered up every wall. The flames roared as loud as his questions.What is happening?
He turned to the bed.
Empty.
Except for the bloodstains.Mr. Foxcroft—
Sparks landed on Tom’s skin, fueling him back into action. He seized the man on the floor, pulled the weight over his shoulders, as something creaked overhead.
A blazing beam crashed to their left, blocking the door.
Tom whirled for the window.
With a heaving cough, he smashed his boot through the closed shutters and hurled the man through.
