If Fenris was everything Quentin was afraid to be, he would have remained at the Haven and seized what he wanted. He wouldn’t have considered the consequences.
Unless something had restrained him, redirected his desires. Someone. If that person had been Johanna, surely she would have brought Quentin back. She had the skill, the courage, and the stubbornness.
No. The last he’d seen of Johanna was when she faced down the mob. He was sure that Fenris hadn’t been near her since.
But who else could hold Fenris in check… except his other self?
Hope made Quentin catch his breath. Could he have been fighting without knowing it? Fenris had every advantage, with access to Quentin’s memories, while Quentin remained in darkness. Until Johanna had told him, he hadn’t known that Fenris existed. Now the implacable shadow had a name. A name was something to fight.
“Somehow,” Johanna had said, “you and I must find a way to communicate with him. Bring him into the light, and confront him.”
But this was not a matter of communication and confrontation. It was war. The battle was solely Quentin’s—Quentin the coward, the ne’er-do-well, who had mustered up an inner core of strength to resist.
And he had to make use of it while he could. He had to learn what Fenris was doing in San Francisco, and then find a way to stop him. Expel him for good. Take back his life.
Win Johanna’s love.
She’d never said she loved him. This was his great chance to prove himself worthy of her—worthy of the life he might create when Fenris was gone. Salvation. A new beginning.
Failure had only one consequence: oblivion. Death. That was the final act Quentin Forster would commit should Fenris win the battle.
Do you hear me? he called into the depths of his mind. I’m not running anymore, Fenris-the-shadow.
An answer came—not in a voice, but as a memory. A memory of emotion, a red haze of rage, the scents of rot and hopelessness, the view of a face.
May’s face. Quentin strove to grasp the memory and pull it closer. Like a weighted chain, it slipped from his hold.
But not before the memory gave up one last clue: an alley, a sign, a familiar streetcorner. The Barbary Coast. That was a part of the city Quentin knew, a den of iniquity that Fenris had shared with him all those times he’d wakened with no memory of his recent past.
That was where Fenris laired. And May was with him.
May. What did Fenris want with her?
Quentin pulled himself to his feet and swallowed the bile in his throat. Run, he commanded himself. Save her.
A vicious presence stirred, reaching, tearing, laughing. You are Fenris. Save her from yourself.
He stood very still, emptying his thoughts until his body and mind went chill and heavy. The presence fled. It could not survive—Fenris could not survive—where fear and anger were absent. Even love must be severed until Fenris was gone.
Love he’d already lost.
In cold-blooded dispassion, he turned and began to walk toward hell.
Chapter 22
“Johanna could almost imagine the stink of sulfur and I brimstone.
The man who greeted her on the street corner where the hackney driver had left her was as seedy a character as any she’d met, wearing a patch over one eye and a sour, gap-toothed smile.
“You the doc?” he asked, scratching his flea-infested rags.
“Yes. Are you the man who is to take me to… Were you sent here for me?”
“Aye. I’m to take you to him. He’s put the word out that no one in the Acre’s to bother you.” He leered at her brazenly. “Good thing. You wouldn’t last a minute.”
Johanna was not inclined to argue. Did Fenris have so much power here?
“C’mon,” the man said. He set off down the ill-lit street, passing dance halls and opium dens, groggeries and deadfalls by the dozens. Shadows scurried and staggered from building to building: cutthroats, drunks, prostitutes, and thieves of every description. Some of them stopped to stare, a few graced her with catcalls, but none approached.
This was Fenris’s kingdom.
She thrust her hand into her coat pocket and felt for the gun. Using it would literally be a matter of last resort, if May had to be protected. And even then she wasn’t sure she could kill.