Forged by Desire (London Steampunk Book 4)

by Bec McMaster

  Now he could not. Because she was the greatest torment he faced, and how the devil could a man admit that to a woman? To a friend? Every moment she was with him, he couldn’t stop thinking about her—the sound of the soft, little moans she would make as he pinned her beneath him, the taste of her skin, and the wetness of her blood splashing over his lips… He shifted and forced his thoughts to other things. To two poor girls with their hearts cut out of their chests.

  “I hope not,” Perry murmured.

  Garrett shared her sentiments. Verwulfen were another species indeed. Dangerous, ridiculously strong, and impervious to pain when in the grip of berserkergang, the strange fury that drove them while they were in a rage. The Echelon had ruled them too volatile to live freely ever since they’d exterminated the Scottish verwulfen clans at Culloden, locking them in cages and considering them slaves. Dozens of them had been thrown into the Manchester Pits to fight to the death for the joy of the crowd, or even the rough Pits in the East End of London, but times were changing. Several months ago, a treaty had been forged between the Scandinavian verwulfen clans and the Echelon, with a law decreeing all verwulfen in the Isles free of their shackles.

  The man responsible for that was Will Carver. Once second-in-command of a dangerous rookery gang. And now Garrett and Perry had to question Carver’s wife.

  Garrett knew how well that interview would proceed.

  ***

  Luck wasn’t with them. The ambassador was home.

  The ancient butler ushered Garrett and Perry into a study where a pretty young woman sat behind a desk, patiently showing a hulking brute a letter. The man’s coat was strewn carelessly over the back of a chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Despite the cut of the clothing, he seemed ill at ease in it. As if he still wasn’t used to finery.

  At Garrett and Perry’s entrance, the pair looked up, their almost identical bronze-colored eyes locking on the two Nighthawks. While a smile dawned on Mrs. Carver’s lips, her husband merely examined them with a dark glare.

  “Good morning, Mr. Carver.” Garrett bowed his head. “Mrs. Carver.”

  “Is it a good mornin’, then?” Carver replied, straightening to his full, almost intimidating height. “Nighthawks in me study don’t usually herald good news.”

  “Not good news, no,” Garrett replied. “I would like to have a word with your wife, if I might.”

  “I don’t think so,” Carver growled.

  “Will.” Mrs. Carver shot him a demure look from beneath her lashes. Though Carver’s lips thinned, he stepped back and folded his arms across his chest, letting her have her way.

  “What may I do for you?” she asked, leaning back in the chair and eyeing the pair of them. Her dark hair was gathered into a neat chignon, yet delicate brown ringlets framed her pretty heart-shaped face. She was the sort of woman that might have drawn Garrett’s eye a while ago. Perhaps a month or more ago.

  Perry stepped forward. “A pair of bodies was found at one of the draining factories this morning—”

  “What are you tryin’ to say?” Carver snapped.

  “One of the girls wore the same ring your wife does,” Perry replied. “We’re trying to ascertain the girl’s identity. Nothing else. Barrons sent us here to inquire about the ring.”

  Garrett let her lead. Perhaps Carver would find it less antagonizing to deal with a woman. And it gave him time to study the pair of them.

  Mrs. Carver looked genuinely distressed at the news. She touched the ring on her right hand, her brow furrowing. “That’s terrible news. But I don’t know if I can help you. There are dozens of these in circulation. They—” She broke off.

  “We know their purpose,” Garrett added, “and it is none of our concern. We merely wish to identify the bodies. The other girl looks to have had a similar ring on her finger, but the ring was removed.”

  Perry swiftly reeled off the details of the girls’ appearances, impressing even Garrett. When it came to conversation, he could recall almost every word spoken, but Perry’s skills of observation were unparalleled. It was one of the reasons they worked so well together.

  Mrs. Carver slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry. That could describe almost two dozen debutantes.”

  “Would it be possible for you to view the bodies?” Perry asked. “To help identify them?”

  Carver shifted but his wife laid a hand on his wrist, stilling him instantly. “I can try. I find it difficult to deal with such things now that my senses are so enhanced. The smell—” She grimaced. “I shall try.”

  Garrett’s estimation of Mrs. Carver rose. She might look like a bit of muslin, but she had a core of inner steel, it seemed. “I shall send word ahead to headquarters. Would you care to take our carriage?”

  “Now?” Mrs. Carver asked, her pretty, almond-shaped eyes widening.

  “No time like the present,” Garrett replied smoothly. If they were correct in the assumption that the two victims were of the Echelon, they needed to track this killer before word hit the news sheets.

  Or worse, the Echelon gossip mill.

  ***

  Perry watched as Dr. Gibson gently peeled the sheet away from the face of the first body. The girls had been brought back to the cold, sterile room in headquarters that Dr. Gibson used for his autopsies. Thankfully, the doctor hadn’t yet started.

  Gaslight painted a distinct, icy-blue glow across the dead girl’s face. Garrett moved into view, escorting Mrs. Carver and her hulking husband.

  Carver looked bothered by the smell, standing over his wife and scrubbing at his nose. His broad shoulders strained at his coat, and his long, tawny hair brushed against his lapels. He was not the type of man who would normally catch the eye of a young debutante—as Mrs. Carver had once been—but every married woman or widow in the district would recognize the underlying virility and touch of carnality that rested uneasily beneath his skin. Even Perry did. Verwulfen were dangerous men, and Carver more so than most.

  However, he was particularly careful with his wife, his hand sliding over the small of her back. Almost gentle. As if he took some comfort in the touch too.

  Mrs. Carver tugged off her gloves, then glanced at the girl. Instantly the color bleached from her face. “Oh.”

  “You recognize her?” Garrett asked intently, his blue eyes even brighter in the gaslight.

  Shadows sculpted the high arch of his cheekbones and brows. A devilishly handsome man, and intimidated by nothing. Comfortable in his own skin to the point that eyes automatically turned when he entered a room. This was what Lynch had seen in him when he reluctantly named him as his successor. This was what Perry saw. There had been other options for guild master, but Garrett was the best of them.

  Perry folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall. She felt comfortable in the shadows, letting Garrett handle the matter. And she too found the cold, chemical scent of death unnerving.

  “It’s Miss Amelia Keller,” Mrs. Carver said. Her expression softened and she reached out, as if to touch the girl. Carver might be all brute, but his wife suffered the finer emotions. “She was on the cusp of making a thrall contract with the Earl of Brumley.”

  “Was there a reason she sought you out for the poison ring?” Garrett asked.

  “The same reason they all do. It’s becoming quite the sport for blue blood lords to ambush young ladies the moment they step outside a ballroom or when their chaperone’s back is turned.”

  “So nobody wished her harm? Specifically?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. However, I knew her only peripherally.” She exchanged a glance with Carver.

  “Verwulfen have been given the pardon now,” he muttered, “but not all o’ them pasty-faced vultures like dealin’ with us.”

  Mrs. Carver had fallen far from her former rank within the Echelon by not only marrying a verwulfen, but becoming one.

  “They come to me when they’re desperate,” Mrs. Carver added.

  “What about her fiancé,
the Earl of Brumley?” Perry asked.

  “He doted on her. He was nearly twice her age, and I believe he considered himself quite fortunate to have landed her,” Mrs. Carver replied.

  Garrett nodded at Dr. Gibson, who whipped the sheet back over the girl’s form. “And the other,” he murmured, moving around the steel examination table.

  This time Mrs. Carver was prepared. Her nostrils flared minutely when Gibson lowered the sheet. “She smells like…some sort of chemical. Something like ether and perhaps laudanum. Fresh blood too.”

  “You can distinguish that?” Perry asked, for she herself could barely make out the individual chemicals.

  “My sister, Honoria, has scientific tendencies,” Mrs. Carver replied, screwing up her nose. “After visits with her, I’m more than aware of what certain chemicals smell like.”

  “And the girl?” Garrett pressed.

  Mrs. Carver examined her for a long time. “Miss Fortescue, I believe, though I could be mistaken. I’ve seen her but once, and from a distance. She did not come to me for the ring. She must have received it through an associate of mine.”

  Garrett thanked her for her help and quietly escorted the Carvers to the door. When they were gone, Perry could no longer stand it. She dragged the sheet up over Miss Fortescue’s face and let out a sigh.

  “This one’s going to be a right pickle,” Dr. Gibson muttered, wiping his hands on a cloth. The ex-army surgeon was fastidious.

  “Daughters of the Echelon,” Perry agreed. “They’ll be screaming for heads to roll.” She circled the table. The sheet clung to each girl, a dimple revealing where the chest cavity had been spread. For a moment her gorge rose, and she swallowed. Her own nightmares were ten years old. This couldn’t be happening again. What were the odds?

  But he’s back in town, an insidious little voice whispered. And if the Moncrieff is back…

  A vision flashed into her mind of the monster who’d once strapped her to a steel examination table like this and…done things to her. Horrible things that were best not thought of again. A clammy coldness circled her brow, and her nostrils pinched together. I killed Hague. I know I did.

  The whirling arc of the sword as she cleaved Hague’s face in two, blood spraying across the Duke of Moncrieff’s bedroom… When she ran, he’d been screaming—or trying to anyway, through what was left of his face—but what man could live through such a thing?

  “Your initial observations of the bodies—what were your findings?” she asked.

  “It’s a mystery, to be sure. I would suspect Miss Keller died almost ten hours ago. However, the coldness of the factory might mean time of death was actually earlier. The removal of her heart was done more precisely than even I could attempt. Evidently he had time to perform the procedure—and that’s what this was. A procedure.

  “I don’t know what he hoped to achieve, but he’s performed the process many times before. There is some organic substance on her skin that I can’t quite identify, and the aorta and pulmonary artery leading from where her heart once lay are…in a state of postmortem healing. I cannot even describe it.”

  Healing. A sense of cold lashed down Perry’s spine. “Have you tested her for any sign of the craving virus?”

  Gibson looked up from the sheet-covered body, his bushy brows beetling over his eyes. “It’s not standard procedure on females.”

  “But her body is healing,” Perry argued, flexing and unflexing her fingers. “And I’m proof enough that accidents occur.” She wanted to be out of here now. As far away from the bodies as she could get. As far away from… Was it time to run again? She’d thought she’d found some sense of safety here. The guild had become her home in a way that the Echelon had never been.

  And leaving Garrett… Her breath caught, indecision sweeping through her. Stay? Or run before the Moncrieff found her?

  “I’ll test them for signs of the craving virus. Whoever our killer is, he’s had a lot of experience with a scalpel. He’s also very strong.”

  “We’re looking for someone from a medical trade then.”

  “A surgeon, a barber, a butcher… Someone who uses a blade in their day-to-day life.” Gibson sighed. “The other strange thing is that there are no defensive wounds whatsoever on Miss Keller, no signs of struggle or hints of skin beneath her fingernails. As if she simply lay there while he performed the deed.”

  “Chloroform or ether?” Perry asked. “Mrs. Carver could smell ether, after all. Perhaps she didn’t fight because she was unconscious or dead from inhalation.”

  “Maybe. Miss Fortescue was another matter.” He used a stylus to lift back her bloodied lip. There was some foreign substance caught in her teeth. “She bit him. Hard enough to tear skin. She was struggling when this happened, and I would presume that he had his hand over her mouth.”

  “Mallory startled him in the process of moving her.” Perry was starting to draw conclusions.

  Gibson nodded. “Perhaps. From the wounds on her chest, the removal of her heart was done in a hurry. And I’m fairly certain I can make out a stab wound, though I’ll know more once I’ve completed the autopsy.” Moving away from the bodies, he cleaned his hands. “God only knows why he took the time to remove her heart, if he thought Mallory might find him.”

  Perhaps because he couldn’t bear to leave it behind. She’d encountered a man like that once.

  That was her cue to leave. Perry muttered her good-byes and closed the door behind her with a soft snick. She stayed there for a moment, forehead pressed against the cold, iron-bound door, as memory assaulted her. A cold, sterile laboratory, outfitted with dozens of shelves featuring glass jars full of strange amorphous shapes… Her vision clearing as she blinked her way back into consciousness… Light reflecting back off steel implements… The jars… Something about the jars…

  About the shapes in them.

  A human heart. And other organs. Hague’s little trophies.

  Hague had been only a human, a scientist who worked for the Moncrieff. There was no way he could have survived what she’d done to him the night she’d fled.

  Was there?

  I cut half his face off. His jaw was dangling by a single scrap of tendon… The thought made her stomach revolt, but she forced herself to push through it. She’d seen Hague go down, bleeding all over the Moncrieff’s fine silk sheets. She could remember that from the morass of nightmarish images that were all that remained of that night. Stricken with the first stages of the craving virus, she’d barely been lucid as she fought her way free of the laboratory and staggered out into the streets.

  But she’d never seen Hague actually die. For the first time, doubt assailed her. He was the type of man who would have stayed long enough to remove a girl’s heart. He’d have needed to. It was an abnormality in him that she’d never encountered before. And though he’d been human, the Moncrieff was not. If the duke had returned home from his club in time, he might have been able to save his precious doctor by using his blood to infect him with the craving. He’d always boasted to her of his high CV levels. Such a thing could heal almost everything, and Hague had been a genius, irreplaceable.

  They’d blamed the Moncrieff for her disappearance, so he must have returned soon enough after her escape. All they’d found was blood splashed across his bedroom. No sign of Hague’s body, but she’d assumed the duke covered it up. Couldn’t have anyone seeing what was going on in the cellars, after all. Which was probably why he’d set the house on fire.

  “Don’t ever go down those stairs. That floor is off-limits,” the duke had told her when she’d first come to his house.

  “But why?” Perry had asked, always curious and insatiably so at seventeen.

  “Perhaps I have the bodies of my former consorts hidden down there,” the duke had replied with a slight smile, as he referenced the old tale.

  At least there was one thing she could say about him. He’d never actually lied to her.

  Slowly Perry pressed her fingers against her chest. Th
ere was no scar there, thanks to the craving virus, but she could almost feel where the blade had cut in, slicing through her flesh while she screamed and strained against her manacles. Cold trickled down her spine like a trail of marching spiders.

  “Just be still, mijn lief… This won’t hurt for very long…”

  Unlike the duke, Hague had lied.

  Four

  Informing someone that their daughter’s body had been found was never a pleasant task.

  The moment the butler opened the door, Garrett knew it was going to be one of those meetings. He and Perry were ushered into Lord Keller’s front parlor, while the butler went to fetch his master. Perry traced her fingers over a fragile glass vase. Garrett had the uncomfortable feeling that she was no longer with him; there was a sense of distance about her.

  “Are you all right?” She’d been quiet on the ride over, distracted again. Those small silences might have fallen one too many times in the last month, but they’d been silences full of things left unsaid and swift little glances that each of them stole when they thought the other wasn’t looking. Silences that seemed thick and lush and full of what had happened at the opera.

  This was different.

  “I can’t help thinking that this is where they’ll display her,” Perry whispered, trailing her fingers over a lace doily on the back of an embroidered armchair. “It’s already like a crypt.”

  A stuffed parrot stared glassily back at him from its perch on some ornamental table display. Garrett silently agreed. The parlor was still, waiting. Full of polished furniture that would never see use until someone passed away and needed to be displayed. Even the ormolu clock on the mantel had frozen. No doubt someone had simply forgotten to wind it, but the silence held a deafening feel.

  The staccato of shoes echoed on the marble tiles in the entrance, and then Lord Keller appeared, the silver wings of his hair powdered and swept back from his forehead. His skin bore traces of rice powder and his lips had been slightly rouged, which gave him the appearance of something that had returned from the dead. One of the more old-fashioned members of the Echelon then, still wearing his Georgian pumps and silk stockings. Some of the older blue bloods did that, lingering in their pasts.