four

Alexei

He and Wilder ran blindly towards the screams, only to behold the strangest, most pathetic spectacle. On the gilding of a bridge that hugged the silver waters of the Thames, a group of stray boys were holding a cat over the water, upside down.

About to drown it.

But they hadn't done it yet, and the reason was the slight figure of a boy, who had stepped between the boys and the cat, trying to stop them.

The boy was the source of the unearthly screams.

In front of Alexei's eyes, the children grabbed the boy by the ankles and turned him upside down, lowering him over the bridge, into the Thames, as if he were an animal too.

He would drown with the cat.

Three things made Alexei pause as he ran, and none of them was the fact that he had nearly escaped death a few moments ago.

One: That was his cat the children were about to murder.

Two: That was the boy he had been following all night they were about to drown. The same filthy little spy who had forced him to come out of his club in the middle of the night: Alexei had found him. He was currently hanging upside down above the water, screaming bloody murder.

And three: Something else happened inside Alexei at the gruesome sight, something dark and slithering, that froze him on the spot.

Suddenly, the landscape changed.

It was no longer the boy, the cat and the gang dangling over the murky waters of the Thames.

It was Alexei himself.

The drowning kitten was he and he was the drowning kitten.

There was no difference between the two.

And Alexei couldn't breathe.

"Leave him alone!" a voice sliced through his thoughts—the young boy's voice.

Alexei whipped around, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

The street was dark, and the river was gleaming in the faint yellow light coming from the streetlamps, its smell sickening. Alexei had never been able to stomach the stench of deep, still waters.

The boy who had been spying on him at the club was not screaming in fear. No, he was screaming at the children to stop torturing the cat.

"Stop it! Leave him be!"

Alexei, lost inside his own mind, was back at his home country, about to be killed by his own father. He was the one about to be drowned. And the boy was all that stood between him and utter hell.

"Get your hands off him!" the boy's shrill voice screamed again.

His words were followed by a torrent of crude laughter. Then a few curses, and the boy started making gurgling noises, as though someone was choking him.

Oh, hell, Alexei thought and strode swiftly over, signaling to Wilder to follow.

"What have we here?" he asked in a bored voice.

Six pairs of eyes turned to meet his.

Four of them belonged to children, none older than twelve or thirteen years of age, and in their middle, shorter than them all, not to mention upside down, the young man from the club. Under the streetlamp's yellow light, his clothes looked scruffy and ill-fitting and his boots too big. The boy's face looked both fierce and frightened at the same time. And he was fighting his little heart out.

The remaining pair of eyes belonged to Cerberus—the cat. He was held over the water, and was shaking. Alexei took a step forward, prepared to murder everyone in sight.

A stream of obscenities spewed from the youth's lips.

Alexei was taken rather aback, not having expected the violence of the boy's emotion, but he didn't blame him for it. What he was seeing before his eyes was a scene of such unbelievable cruelty, that he had to shake himself out of his shocked state again and again.

The boy was being lowered to the water, head first.

Alexei swore.

"Stop!" he commanded. "Let them both down at once."

The children froze momentarily.

"What?" the individual who was holding the animal said, turning to Alexei.

The cat squirmed to get out of his hands, and the boy from the club made a muffled sound, which was quenched quickly by a palm pressed to his mouth. A curse followed.

"He bit me!" one of the men said.

Laughter bubbled inside Alexei's throat. Of course he did.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Alexei asked the children with deadly calm.

"We're going ter throw the boy in with the cat. He'll make a bigger splash!"

In an instant, before Alexei had time to react, they swung the boy up by his ankles and put the cat in his arms, before lowering him again over the railing to the water.

"No!" the boy's voice was weak with desperation. "Help! Help me, fer God's sake!"

Alexei pinched the bridge of his nose.

No words could stop them now, they were too far gone. He'd need to take action.

"Wilder," he said briskly, but his guard was already bending over the dark, churning waters of the river, reaching for the boy.

The gang members pushed the boy towards the water. Wilder grabbed his boots just in time, but the children fought to push him down and away from Wilder's grasp. Wilder, still coughing and struggling to breathe from being strangled a few minutes ago, fought the boys.

They were surprisingly strong as they all worked together, like a pack of tiny but vicious wolves, and it was hard for him to fight them and hold on to the boy at the same time. Wilder had the young man by his boots, but he was being pelted by punches and if he abruptly let go, both the boy and the cat would plunge headfirst into the freezing river.

Alexei shrugged out of his coat and quickly rolled his sleeves, praying under his breath that he wouldn't have to take a nightly dip in the murky waters.

A raw scream sliced the cold air.

The boy was now hanging onto Wilder's arms for dear life, his head dangling over the water.

"I'm falling," he whispered.

Alexei could see at a moment that it was true: in a second, the boy would be in the water.

Gritting his teeth against the unpleasant sensation of touching another human being, Alexei quickly grabbed Wilder's upper arm and pulled with all his might. Using all his strength, he pulled two of the boys away from the edge, and they, staggering, sprawled across the pavement. The last child resisted for a while, but Alexei was a good pugilist and finally his strength prevailed. The gang member stepped back, falling to his knees on the ground, and Wilder followed him at once, trying to restrain him and the other children.

Alexei had barely enough time to reach forward and grab the falling boy's hand over the railing, before he was plunged into the ink-black water. His feet were already splashing in the dark waters, but he had tucked Cerberus between his elbows, and had locked them around the animal, not letting go.

At least Wilder had righted him before leaving him to Alexei.

They boy's face was inches away from his own, white and thin and terrified.

It was little more than a pair of huge green eyes.

"Look up at me," Alexei commanded, hoping the boy would understand past his panic. "Don't look down, look at me." The boy obeyed at once. His cheeks were dirty and pale, and a few soft curls were escaping his felt cap. God, he was young. "Good," Alexei said encouragingly. "Good; now give me your other hand."

The lad's teeth were chattering badly, but he bit his lips in determination and did as he was told, bringing up his hand to Alexei's. Alexei caught it in a firm grasp, even though it hurt him to do so.

"No, don't move, I'll lift you up," Alexei gasped. He dragged the lad up as though he weighed nothing, and pulled him over the railing.

Immediately the boy let go of Alexei's hands and rolled over on his stomach on the street, taking deep shuddering breaths. Alexei braced his hands on his knees and gasped, flexing his arm muscles.

Touching the boy had taken more strength out of him than pulling him over. Panting, he looked over. They boy was not moving. At all.

"Are you alive?" Alexei asked the still form.

The young man—the boy, really—took a moment to answer. He still wasn't moving, and a hint of panic was beginning to grip Alexei, when he slowly sat up on trembling limbs and looked around him, tucking his torn shirt into his too-large trousers, and straightening his dirtied cap.

Cerberus, damn him, peeked from inside the boy's shirt, orange ears perked up, checking to see if the coast was clear.

"Where's them sick bastards?" the boy said, attempting to get up. It took him three efforts before he finally managed it.

Alexei did not move to help him.

"Gone," he replied, dusting himself off. "My man is taking care of them. You and the c-cat are all that's left."

His voice wobbled on the ‘cat', and he hated himself for it.

You are not a damn kitten, Mikailoff, he told himself sternly. Not anymore, anyway. Stop being such a baby.

But he still couldn't stop shaking; and it didn't look like he was about to in the near future.

"Oh," the lad said, dropping on all s and burying his dirty little face in the cat's fur. "You're safe."

Alexei would swear he heard tears in the lad's voice. He turned away, half-moved, half-disgusted.

"This is my cat you're fondling," he said in a tone meant to sound bored, but which ended up sounding more choked up than anything.

For God's sake, pull yourself together. This is not you the boy just saved from drowning. It's just a miserable old cat.

"Yer welcome, Yer Lordship," the boy replied, unfazed, and proceeded to sneeze loudly.

Alexei saw that his pants were drenched up to his knees. He cursed under his breath.

"Ungrateful little traitor," he said to the cat, reaching out his foot to the cat's whiskers.

Cerberus usually loved this, rubbing his orange little snout against the leather of Alexei's boot, but right now he was ignoring the gesture in favor of the boy's wet pantaloons.

"Leave him be!" A small, shrill-sounding voice interrupted him, and Alexei turned around to behold the lad turned chalk-white and shaking violently. "He belongs to me now," the boy said in his annoying little voice. "I saved 'im, didn't I? Well, he's mine now."

"No, you did not. And he is not." Alexei snapped, feeling bone-tired. "If you had been left to your own devices, you would be at the bottom of the Thames right now." A shiver shook his spine. "I saved you both. Calm yourself, will you, for heaven's sake, I won't harm the cat. Or you," he added as an afterthought.

What a little actor the boy was.

I should have let the river take him.

The boy lifted his eyes to Alexei's face. They were strangely brilliant under the flickering lamp's light, and Alexei couldn't shake the strange sensation that he was being examined. He couldn't look away either.

"I'll not let ye hurt him," the youth said, his pale lips wobbling. "I am taking him home with me, Your Worship, and don't you dare touch him!"

Alexei had to fight the increasing urge to throw the boy to the Thames himself. It might wipe the stupid, frightened expression from his heart-shaped face; then again, the expression looked quite permanent. It might not. But the terrified expression had to go, one way or another. It made Alexei's insides turn.

"You are going nowhere," Alexei said, "except with me, you little cheat."

"I am not a cheat!" the boy practically yelled.

"I was watching you," Alexei retorted, "all night tonight at the club, and last night as well. You have been taught by a gambler. A gambler and a scoundrel, I'll bet my fortune on it." The boy trembled. Alexei guessed it had been the lad's father who had taught him; that was usually the way.

But what was the reason the young man was gambling alone, in disguise, with his father nowhere to be seen? It was bound to be a sad, sordid story. And also, Alexei couldn't care less.

"You are an expert cheat," he went on, "I'll give you that: It takes one to know one."

"I have not cheated in me whole life," the boy blubbered, but Alexei lifted a hand to stop him.

"Please," he said. "Do not insult both our intelligences, my own superior one and your limited one." The boy looked scared. Good. "You are a cheat, but no better than me. Not to mention that you were spying on me. Therefore, you are now my prisoner."

The boy started to reply, something nonsensical undoubtedly, but was interrupted by a cough that made him double in two and left him reeling, barely able to stay upright.

Alexei feared that he would be forced to grasp his elbow to keep him from keeling over.

Let's hope it won't come to that.

"That's it," Alexei said, disgusted. "I'm calling a hackney."