Ravensclaw by Maggie MacKeever Page B

Emily glared at Drogo, who didn’t budge an inch. Then she scowled at Jamie. “Why are you staring at me as if I’d grown a second head?”
    Jamie pointed. “Behind ye, miss!”
    Emily spun around. Three hulking brutes loitered at the mouth of the close. No sooner had she spied them than they abandoned all pretense of idleness and advanced on her. Rather, two advanced. The third jerked like a puppet when he walked, his pale face twitching uncontrollably. In one hand he clutched a sack.
    Emily might have run, but Drogo was tangled in her skirts. She raised her umbrella and prepared to defend herself.
    The men were already upon them. Emily speared the instep of one assailant, whacked another in the shin, had picked up her skirts to flee when the twitching man yanked the umbrella from her hand and tossed a sack over her head.
    Jamie, being of shorter stature and fewer inhibitions, had aimed directly for the nearest crotch.  A moment of contact, an agonized bellow, and then he was batted into a towering pile of refuse. Drogo took to his heels.
    ‘Twas a right bourach. Jamie flailed about in the slippery, stinking rubbish. Emily kicked and flung her arms about inside her prison, which smelled most unpleasantly of spoiled fish. “Bloody, blooming, blasted—”
    Her captor punched the sack, hard. The blow knocked the breath out of her, and Emily went limp. She would have a sore belly tomorrow. Providing that she saw tomorrow. Why had these ruffians set on her? Were they resurrection men in search of a fresh body to steal and sell? An extremely fresh body, considering that she was still very much alive.
    Why would they be interested in a little bit of nothing like herself? There was hardly enough meat on Emily’s bones to exercise a surgeon’s scalpel. Maybe her bones themselves were of more value. Maybe her skeleton would have a place of honor in some anatomist’s dissecting room.
    Emily didn’t want to be dissected. Concentrate! she told herself. Her abductors were arguing. She heard the word “feartie” mentioned, and more clearly, “sweerbreeks.”
    Oxter and Mowdiewarp, as they called each other, were the more vocal of the three. Emily was relieved to learn that these were not resurrection men, merely ruffians for hire; and it was just as well their employer didn’t want the lass dead instead of tossed over Twitcher’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, because none of them had the stomach for such work.
    Unnoticed by the others, Jamie squirmed out from beneath the pile of rubbish. He couldna lounge there lak a doolally, greetin’ over the puir mawkit condition of his nice new clothes, now slechered in nasty substances he didna want to know the nature of. He must gather his wits about him so that he could follow when the bajins took Miss Emily away.
    As it turned out, they took her nowhere. Drogo reappeared at the far end of the close. The wolf was not alone. Ravensclaw moved with startling speed to smash one man against the wall of a building. He flung another onto a rooftop. Twitcher took one look at the newcomer and promptly dropped his burden in the dirt. Ravensclaw caught him by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
    Twitcher kicked and gurgled and struggled to escape that killing grip, those compelling eyes, those long, pointed, razor-sharp fangs.
    His captor spoke in a deep compelling voice. “None of this happened. You and your companions spent the past two hours getting drunk as David’s sow in that tavern on the corner. If you go near this young woman again, I will tear out your liver and wrap your intestines around your neck. Do you understand?”
    Twitcher shuddered. “Aye.” Ravensclaw let him drop to the ground. The man scrambled unsteadily to his feet and staggered down the narrow street.
    Jamie emerged from the pile of rubble. “Och, those are some grand teeth ye hae! I expected ye wid bite that bajin’s heid in twa. Be Miss Emily a’richt? Daft isna the half of it. She be a proper