The man behind me took his hands off my neck. I sagged against the wall, trying to catch my brain up with all that was happening.
They were dead. Arthur had killed them.
I scrambled back further against the wall. I let my disbelieving eyes seek out Arthur. He hadn’t a hair out of place. No droplets of blood were evident on his white shirt. He wasn’t out of breath. He was completely unaffected by what he’d just done.
Arthur pointed his knife at the man who had lifted my dress. His head cocked to the side as he studied him like a panther would do his prey—stealthy, cold, controlled.
“Who sent you?” Arthur asked.
My attacker rocked on his feet from side to side, eyes darting around the alley, clearly looking for an escape. There was none. None, unless he managed to get through Arthur.
“No one,” he said.
Arthur came closer. “I asked you a simple question. You failed to give me an answer.” Arthur reached out and, like a python, grabbed the attacker by his throat. The man lashed out with his fists, but Arthur was too strong for him. “I don’t ask questions twice.” Looking the attacker dead in the eyes, Arthur pushed his blade, slowly, through the man’s shoulder. The man screamed in pain. Arthur seemed unbothered whether people heard the screams or not.
I was as still as statue, frozen in shock. I focused on breathing, my throbbing cheek and neck ignored as I watched the horror show before me. As I watched the boy I had obsessed over for years casually embrace the darkness I had been warned lived within him.
This was the Arthur Adley everyone had heard of. This was the boy that had everyone in London terrified.
But this was also the man who had just saved my life.
Arthur pulled the knife from his shoulder and nodded toward the end of the alleyway behind me. “There’s some broken glass down there. You’re going to go and get a piece.”
I frowned in confusion along with the attacker. “What?” he said. “You want me to have a weapon?”
“You have five seconds, or I will kill you where you stand, slowly and painfully.” The man ran and picked up a long shard of jagged glass. My stomach fell.
What was Arthur thinking?
“Arthur …” I whispered, in warning. But Arthur didn’t even acknowledge me. His attention was solely fixed on the attacker and the weapon he now yielded.
The man crouched down, ready to attack. Arthur placed one hand in his pocket. I wondered if he was reaching for another weapon, a gun maybe. It quickly became apparent he was simply putting his hand in his pocket in a casual, relaxed manner.
“Open your fly again,” Arthur said, and the air in the alleyway grew stagnant with paused breath. He pointed at the attacker with the tip of his knife—a knife that was now dripping with four types of blood—the blood of his slain victims. The attacker did as Arthur said. I turned my head and saw the attacker’s cock. He wore no underwear. Bile rose in my throat. He had been going to force himself on me. If Arthur hadn’t turned up …
Arthur stood stoic and strong. He gestured to the glass in the attacker’s hand and said, “Now saw off your dick.”
I stopped breathing. The attacker’s eyes widened. “If you think I’m fucking—”
Arthur’s knife sailed through the air and plunged into the man’s other shoulder. He screamed and dropped to his knees. Arthur walked toward him, calm as a summer’s breeze, and yanked the knife from the man’s flesh. He held it at his throat. “You do as I say, and I’ll let you live. Don’t, and you die. That’s your choice.”
Arthur stepped back, waiting patiently. With shaking hands, the attacker lifted the shard of glass, staring at it like it was his demise. He brought it to his dick and held it an inch above, eyes flicking from side to side as if he was trying to find an escape and quickly. His breathing was choppy, and tears began building in his eyes. There was no escape. That much was obvious.
Arthur was a towering deadly sentinel, standing silently before his victim, waiting for his instructions to be obeyed. My feet wouldn’t move. I needed to leave, to not see this, but I was frozen. It was as though a subconscious dark place inside me wanted to see this depraved act of revenge carried out.
Arthur took a step forward, knife ready to slit the attacker’s throat. “Wait. Wait!” the attacker said and, taking hold of his dick, brought the glass shard to press lightly against the flesh. He gritted his teeth and began to saw. I squeezed my eyes shut the second he made the first cut, but I heard the guttural noises that poured from his throat and the sticky sound of glass slicing through flesh.
Panicking, I opened my eyes and focused on Arthur only. I needed to see him to calm me down. He appeared as unaffected as when he’d killed the men growing cold on the ground. When a loud bellow sounded behind me, I looked over to my attacker and fought back nausea on seeing his severed dick lying on the ground. Blood gushed from between his legs, and sweat ran in rivulets down his bright red face.
“Let me go,” the attacker pleaded, his voice hoarse from pain.
Arthur nodded once, a succinct silent answer. The man scrambled to his feet, taking his sawn-off appendage with him. He staggered toward Arthur, who stayed unmoving.
Just as he passed Arthur, Arthur threw out his arm in a flash and slit the attacker’s throat. A look of pure disbelief shone in the man’s eyes for a moment before he dropped to his knees and fell forward, blood dripping from his wounds as he landed beside his friends.
Arthur wiped his knife on the attacker’s shirt as the man gargled on blood, then he took his mobile from his pocket and texted someone. He stood, and the realisation of what I’d just witnessed, what had just happened to me, pounded into me like round after round of bullets from a machine gun.
“Come.” Arthur came toward me. He wasn’t gentle in his approach. He took long strides to where I stood, then lifted me into his arms and walked down the alley to the entrance. I closed my eyes as we passed the bodies lying still and soiled on the ground.
When enough time had passed, I opened my eyes and threaded my arms around Arthur’s neck. I felt his strong arms holding me, keeping me close to his chest. I glanced up at his face. He was so ruggedly handsome I could barely stand it.
He had saved me.
He had avenged me.
And he had killed for me.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Arthur kept his face forward, but I noted a small, quick clenching of his jaw. And if I wasn’t mistaken, his arms held me just a little bit tighter.
I heard a car door open and realised we had reached the end of the alleyway. Arthur placed me in the back seat of the car and slid in beside me. I should have been nervous going anywhere with him, but I was the polar opposite. I was safe. I knew I was safe with him.
As we began to pull away, I saw a van stop behind us. Men in black clothes and balaclavas got out and made their way up the alley. “Clean-up”, I assumed.
I stared at Arthur, who was texting on his phone, feeling pain build in my wounds. I stared at this boy I had first met at age thirteen. The boy I had thought of more often than was normal. And now he had saved me. I didn’t know him. Our brief childhood encounter had been fleeting, yet felt as though it had been seared into my brain with a hot iron.
I was all alone with him for the first time in five years.