Ignoring the scrabble of fleeing vermin and the stench of the overflowing gutters, he closed his eyes and listened. Creaking doors. Vulgar catcalls. A screaming child. A shattering glass in the nearby public house. A peal of overzealous female laughter followed by a slurred masculine tone. He leaned back against the damp brick wall, allowing the shadows to absorb him and his rough, unremarkable dark clothing, as the doxy and her client sauntered toward him. He was so well hidden that they didn’t see him until they’d nearly collided.
“Oy!” snarled the man.
“Looks like this spot is taken,” said the woman, her eyes narrowing at Sterling. “A few pennies’ll earn you the right to watch.” She leaned toward him, her unlaced bodice dipping low enough to display a dusky nipple and several bruises shaped like fingers and teeth. Her hair hung in lank strings from a simple bun at the nape of her neck and her dark eyes were glassy with, Sterling suspected, cheap gin. “A couple more ’n’ I’m yours for a suck or a tup.” Her sizable male companion grabbed her upper arm hard enough to make her wince and yanked her away.
“I already paid me money ’n’ I don’t take no one’s leavin’s.” He jerked the doxy deeper into the alley and began untying his loose trousers. “Now is you going to give me me money’s worth or’s I goin’ ta have ta get rough?” His trousers dipped to his thick, hairy thighs and he began to push the girl to her knees but froze when he noticed Sterling hadn’t moved. “You dumb ’r stupid?” He spat a thick wad of saliva near Sterling’s boot. “This is me alley now. Fuck off!”
A low chuckle rose from deep within Sterling’s chest. It was almost a relief when his muscles tensed with the familiar rage, his senses heightening to near-preternatural degrees.
“Somefink funny?”
“Besides your small, pathetically limp cock?” Sterling pushed off the wall and tsked. “Oh, Angus. The fact that you believed you could continue harming women, and that no one would care.”
“How d’you know me name?” he demanded suspiciously, thankfully hiking up his trousers.
“Why is it always the idiots who think they’re the masterminds?” Sterling asked while looking at the wide-eyed doxy, not expecting an answer. He returned his frigid gaze to Angus. “You’re clumsy, Angus. I will say, it was a nice touch growing a beard to hide your birthmark, but not good enough.”
“I ain’t done nofink.”
Sterling raised a finger at him. “That is where I beg to differ, old fellow. And I’m sure the six women you assaulted and maimed would agree.”
“What? You a bobby?”
“Oh, Angus…” Sterling sighed regretfully. “You only wish I were one. Unfortunately for you, their rules do not apply to me.”
“Them’s just whores!” he bellowed and took a threatening step forward, seeming to forget his earlier denial thanks to the icy bite in Sterling’s words.
“And you are just a cowardly slug who takes his sexual incapabilities out on those who cannot defend themselves.”
The other man’s lip curled to reveal a yellowed, gap-toothed mouth. “You won’t live to regret that…” The man whipped a small blade from the pocket of his brown homespun coat and lunged for Sterling’s gut, but Sterling was faster.
The doxy shrieked as Sterling side-stepped the clumsy blow, pushed the other man’s arm down, and elbowed him in the side of the head. Angus bellowed a curse and stumbled, barely catching himself before he careened into a very questionable pile on the alley floor.
Spittle flying from his loose lips, Angus charged him again and again, the blade glinting in the dim light. Muscle memory from years of training and practice guided his movements. He hadn’t been sent to the Continent until it was determined he could fend for himself in all manners of combat. Close-range was, by far, his preferred method. Far more skilled than this rough brute, Sterling could have disarmed him immediately, but he needed this. He needed the exertion. He needed the fight. He needed to sweat.
Most of all, he needed to punish someone who truly deserved it.
Realizing he wasn’t going to win that way, Angus sought an easier target. His bloodshot eyes flicked over to the doxy, who’d made the mistake of sliding in the direction of the alley’s mouth to attempt an escape.
Sterling swore under his breath as Angus charged her. A perfectly timed kick to the man’s wrist sent the blade flying. Angus screamed, clutching his wrist to his chest, doubling over and giving Sterling the perfect angle to ram his knee into his snub nose. A spurt of crimson flew, preceding a garbled scream, and the man fell backward into a filthy puddle. He pressed the heel of his boot into the other man’s doughy gut.
“Are we finished, Angus?” he asked condescendingly as he leaned over the man.
The man whipped another small blade from an inner pocket of his coat.
Apparently not.
In one fluid move, Sterling swiped the blade from the other man’s meaty, bloody hand and rammed it through the fleshy part of his bicep. He gave it a little twist for good measure. Angus’s scream echoed through the alley before it was swallowed up in the cacophony of London’s nocturnal activities.
“Give me a reason to end it,” Sterling snarled, overflowing with feral violence. “I just need a reason.” He recognized in the curl of Angus’s lip that the man was preparing to spit. Sterling deftly avoided the bloody spray by sliding the toe of his boot up and averting the man’s face so it splattered ineffectually against the wall of the nearby building.
Sterling righted himself and found the doxy huddled against the wall, her arms over her head to shield her. He crouched down and held out his hand to the woman. She shied away, tears streaming down her face, and he noticed just how young she actually was. He would have been shocked to discover she was even as old as Alaina had been when they’d married. His chest clenched at the thought.
She flinched when he reached into his pocket, but her eyes perked at the glint of coins. “Have a meal and find a safe place to sleep tonight.” Her eyes darted from his face to his offering only a second before she snatched them, muttered her gratitude, and fled. He hoped she’d do just that, but there was a good chance the coins would be spent on enough cheap gin that she wouldn’t care where she slept.
Sterling cast a glance at the prone, bleeding, cursing man on the ground before he released a loud whistle through his teeth. Five men dashed forward toward Angus and Sterling slipped from the alley into the night.
He made it only a quarter of a block before a shadow peeled itself away from the darkness and matched his stride.
