What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

unnerve me, I take it?” He shook his head. “It won’t work.” The man’s face suddenly hardened, his normally placid, smiling features twisting in a way that reminded Sebastian of Bayard. “Set the girl down on the dock—but don’t get up. Back away from her on your knees.”
    His gaze still focused on Wilcox’s face, Sebastian eased Kat down onto the dock. She let out a soft sigh, then lay still as he shifted awayfrom her, repositioning his weight subtly so that he came up into a crouch.
    Wilcox smiled. “There. I need a clean shot. Wouldn’t want to confuse the authorities when I present them with your dead body. And the mutilated corpse of your last victim, of course,” he added, his gaze flicking significantly toward Kat. “They’ll be so pleased.”
    Sebastian had his good leg under him, his muscles tensed, ready to spring, as he watched Wilcox’s eyes.
    “No one actually cares who killed those women. You understand that, don’t you? No fire burns within the collective metropolitan bosom to see justice done. People simply want to feel safe, and with you dead, they will. I’ll be a hero. Ironic, isn’t it?”
    Sebastian saw the flicker in Wilcox’s eyes the instant before his finger tightened on the pistol’s trigger.
    Sebastian dove forward, twisting his body sideways as he flung up his left arm. His open palm slammed into Wilcox’s extended wrist, knocking it up just as the pistol exploded fire and smoke into the night.
    Sebastian felt a searing heat tear across his upper arm. Then his right shoulder slammed into Wilcox at midthigh. He wrapped his good arm around the back of the bastard’s knees and yanked, although the sheer momentum of the lunge would have been enough by itself to knock him over.
    Wilcox went down hard, his back hitting the dock with a thump that drove the air from his lungs in a huff as Sebastian landed on top of him. Still gasping for breath, Wilcox swung the empty flintlock like a club, bashing its heavy weight down on Sebastian’s back.
    Swearing harshly, Sebastian grabbed the man’s pistol hand in a brutal grip and yanked it over his head, tightening his grip until Wilcox relaxed his hold on the pistol in a spasm of pain. Then he went suddenly, utterly still.
    “So you’ve overpowered me,” he said panting, the light from the distant fire gleaming in his eyes as he smiled up at Sebastian. “What now, hmm? You do realize that you’ve no proof of what I did to those women. None. Even the scratches that bitch left on my neck have healed. It’ll simply be your word against mine. And who would believe you?”
    “You’re forgetting Kat Boleyn.”
    “What? The word of a whore? Against that of a friend of the Crown Prince himself?” Wilcox smiled. “I don’t think so.” Still smiling, he twisted his lower body and drove his knee up, straight into Sebastian’s wounded thigh.
    The pain exploded in a fireball that made Sebastian gasp. For an instant his vision blurred and his head swam, and his hold on Wilcox relaxed just enough to enable the man to clamber backward from beneath him.
    Rolling over, Wilcox made it as far as his hands and knees before Sebastian lunged after him. They teetered for a moment at the edge of the dock, then went over together.
    Sebastian lost his grip on Wilcox as they fell. Wilcox slammed into the water in an awkward, crumpled heap. But Sebastian managed to straighten his body so that he hit feet first. He plunged deep into the cold, black water, then shot back to the surface, treading water heavily, weighed down by the awkwardness of boots and rough breeches, the wounds in his shoulder and thigh on fire.
    He could hear his brother-in-law coughing and gasping, see the white of his cravat and waistcoat glowing out of the darkness of the night. Sebastian swam toward him. For a moment the man’s fat head disappeared beneath black water sheened with orange by the distant fire. Then he floundered up again, arms and legs thrashing, his eyes opening wide in his pale face when he saw Sebastian.
    “Help me! For God’s sake, help me . I can’t swim.” One of his flailing hands caught at Sebastian’s neck, clutching, strangling.
    “Let go of me, you fool. You’ll drown us both.”
    But Wilcox was beyond reason. “You can’t let me drown,” he sputtered, his grip on Sebastian tightening, frantic.
    Sucking in a deep breath, Sebastian dove, twisting under Wilcox’s arm to break the man’s grip. This time, he was careful to surface