Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy

by Bec McMaster

  "How do you think we ran the revolution?" Ingrid snorted, shoving aside a rug.

  And he was forced to remember that she'd once been a humanist, one of the founding members of the revolution that tore the prince consort from his throne.

  "I'll leave you to it," Ava said, scraping some sort of residue into a small glass vial that she had tugged from her carpetbag. "My place is not scampering through tunnels. I'll try and work out what this smoky residue is. It's dirtied the floor in areas."

  The three of them crawled across the room, shoving chairs and tables out of the way and peeling back rugs. Byrnes used his knife to feel around the edges of the large floor tiles, keeping an eye on the other two.

  "Got anything?" Byrnes called, watching as the lad paced a rug on the floors, sniffing at the air.

  Charlie flipped the rug out of the way, his face lighting up. "This tile is loose! I can smell blood."

  Byrnes crossed to his side and used his knife to feel the edges of the tile. It wiggled upwards. Clearly loose. "It's moving!"

  Charlie slipped his fingers under the edge of the tile as Byrnes pried it clear of the floor, and together they eased it aside. Beneath it was a grate.

  Hauling the grate out of the stone, Charlie set it aside with a ringing sound, wincing. "It's heavy."

  "Which means our perpetrator is either supernaturally strong, or they used a mechanical contraption to shift it," Ingrid said.

  "And someone stayed behind to ease the rug over the grate again." Byrnes considered what Compton had told him. "Actually, Compton said a beautiful woman left the party nearly ten minutes before he discovered the missing persons. She might have replaced the rug. I'll check the guest list to see how many women were on it."

  Charlie knelt beside the grate, peering into the darkness. "The scent of blood's clearer here."

  Fine. "Ladies first." Byrnes gestured.

  Ingrid lowered herself through the manhole and vanished with a splash. One of the things he admired most about her was her willingness to do what needed to be done in the pursuit of a killer. She hadn't even flinched at the scent wafting up out of the tunnel, and her knee-high boots and leather breeches meant she was dressed for the occasion.

  "Youth before age," Charlie said with a wink, and disappeared after her.

  "You all right here, Ava?" Byrnes called.

  "Fine." She waved a hand, absorbed in some kind of chemical test she was performing.

  Byrnes stepped through the open grate and landed in a splash of water. The predator inside him reared its head, his vision cutting through a dozen colors, and ending up in shades of black and gray as it intensified.

  Some blue bloods had trouble dealing with the other side of the craving virus: the darkness, the hunger. Instead of trying to control his darker side, Byrnes had learned to use it to hunt, and thus assuage the urge to kill. If he glutted his predator half on the thrill of the chase, then most of the time it left him alone.

  Just one problem now: he wasn't focusing on blood, or the scent of whoever had done this... No, all he could smell were lilies, and the heated musk of Ingrid's skin. His gaze locked on her, as though she were the prey.

  Focus. Byrnes curled his fingers into fists and closed his eyes, forcing himself to hone in on the droplets of blood in the water. It was more difficult than he'd expected.

  "I can smell several different perfumes," Ingrid announced, splashing forward through the gloom. She tripped on something and caught herself. "Appears to be some sort of... tracks... underneath. Rail tracks?"

  "Not wide enough," Charlie replied, peering through the murky water. Enough light gleamed through grates set at varying intervals along the tunnel for them to be able to see. "Perhaps closer to what you get in a mine, or in Undertown, when you're using wheeled carriages to carry heavy objects."

  "Whatever it is, it's under ten inches of water," Byrnes pointed out. "So it hasn't been used for a long time."

  "Can you smell that?" Charlie asked, his nostrils wrinkling up, as they splashed along.

  "All I'm getting is that perfume." Byrnes knew he was a good hunter, but the rookery lad just might own better senses than he did.

  "Smells sweet," Ingrid murmured, her amber eyes a beacon in the dark.

  “And kind of rancid,” Charlie muttered.

  They moved silently through the tunnels, just in case whoever had done this was still here.

  "The scent of blood's getting stronger." Byrnes waded ahead, one hand on his knife, as he tracked the scent. “It’s— Oh.”

  A woman floated facedown in the shallow pool of water. Above her, the grate allowed weak sunlight through it, highlighting the edges of her rose-colored silk gown. A gown that was stained and bloody.

  Byrnes slowly rolled her over. Her abdomen was torn apart, like a feral dog had been at it, and so was her throat. Blood spooled through the water, heading in at least three different directions.

  "Why did they kill her?" Byrnes gently levered the woman out of the water and onto a ledge.

  "Looks like an animal attack," Charlie said. “Maybe.”

  "Whatever it was," Ingrid pointed out, gesturing to the fractured ribs, "it was strong. Blue blood?"

  The throat was torn open, but a blue blood's feed was generally cleaner. Without sharp teeth, most blue blood lords preferred to use a thin razor to open the vein, and a chemical in their saliva caused the wound to clot enough to begin healing once they were finished. "Don't think so. No blue blood that I've ever seen anyway. They wouldn't have gone for the abdomen—tear the wrong organ, and it sours the blood. No, they'd have gone for throat, or thigh, or wrist, any of the major arteries."

  "Even in the bloodlust?" she asked.

  "Even then," he confirmed. "It's instinctual. Could a verwulfen have done this?"

  Ingrid chewed her lip. "Yes. I don't know why they would though. If they were suffering from a fit of berserkergang, they'd have kept tearing their enemy apart, limb from limb. A gut wound like this is not a technique we'd usually employ." She knelt closer, examining the ragged edges. "These look like sharp teeth marks, like... fangs. And despite what the superstitious whisper, verwulfen don't change shape. Our hearts beat with the heart of the wolf, but our bodies always remain human."

  "So we're looking for something with fangs," Byrnes mused, "which counts out a blue blood."

  "Vampire?" Charlie whispered, and all of them stilled.

  The hairs on the back on Byrnes's neck lifted, but a quick glance showed that they were alone. Just his body reacting to the word. Even so, he rubbed a hand across his nape, soothing the skin. "I hope not."

  A vampire was rare; the final end stages of the craving virus finally overtaking a blue blood and turning him into something... else. Something wiry and maggot-pale and purely destructive. Ever since a rash of vampires had haunted the city in the 1700s, no blue blood was allowed to exist past a craving virus count of 80 percent. They were executed instead.

  "If it was a vampire, they wouldn't have taken the people," Ingrid pointed out in a soft voice. Even she felt it. "We'd have walked into a bloodbath in the pavilion, and the trail of bloody wreckage would have been easy to follow. A vampire doesn't hide itself, or its acts. It's not smart enough to see past prey. It just kills."

  "And it doesn't stop," Charlie whispered.

  There was nothing more to see here. Byrnes scowled. "Let's follow the trail a little longer, then get the body back to Ava. She assists Dr. Gibson with the autopsies at the guild, so I'm certain she can give us more information. We need to know what killed this woman, and why."

  Byrnes took the lead. Sometimes all he could go by was the splash of blood against the walls. At other times, it was the muddy stir of water. A great many people had either been carried or forced to march through here.

  It took another half hour to realize what was slowing Ingrid’s and Charlie's steps. Byrnes stood at the crossroads of four intersecting tunnels with his hands on his hips.

  "They're long gone," he said, "and t
he water is washing the blood trail in other directions." His jaw hardened. "We've lost them."

  "I don't like to agree," Ingrid replied cautiously, "but... I'm getting nothing. We might not even be following their trail anymore."

  "What we do know," Charlie pointed out, "is that they used the sewer system to get in and out of the Venetian Gardens. This was a planned assault then, and they could have gone anywhere."

  "How could forty people go missing?" Byrnes mused, noticing the warm presence that stepped up to his side.

  "I don't know," Ingrid replied, sharing a sideways glance with him. A shared case—something to focus on—had taken most of the animosity out of her behavior.

  And his, he had to admit. If he were being generous, Ingrid was an excellent person to work with—smart, hardworking, well skilled, and someone who didn't slow him down. "Especially when half of them had to be blue bloods. Not so easy to take down."

  "Not so easy to take down," she agreed. "So how did they do it?"

  FOUR

  SINKING ONTO THE ottoman in Malloryn's library, Ingrid sighed. She should have been looking at the guest list, but she couldn't stop her hand from delving into her pocket, and unfurling the small telegram she had stashed there. Its edges were rumpled, thanks to extensive use ever since she'd received it three days ago.

  Tracked down Bergen family. I'm sorry. Not your family. Don't have other leads. Request next directive? Cease looking?

  Detective Maddeslow.

  Ingrid fingered the worn edges of the telegram. Cease looking. He might as well have cut out her heart. What should she do? This job for Malloryn would give her so much money, perhaps enough to complete her search, but how could she continue when she didn't even have a single idea of where to look?

  When she'd first begun looking for the family whom she'd been stolen from, she'd had so much hope inside her. It was dulled now. Barely a glimmer. Too many years had passed since she'd been kidnapped by English raiders, in the snow near her Norwegian home. And she'd been four. Far too young to recall enough details to track them.

  "Where are you?" she whispered, half to herself.

  Looking up at the sound of footsteps, she shoved the telegram into her pocket, and only relaxed when Ava McLaren entered the room. The young woman's mess of blonde curls was gathered back into a neat chignon, and she wore a plain gown of grass green, with her laboratory apron over the top of it. Something ticked as Ava settled on the sofa across from her, and it was so quiet that Ingrid thought it a clock, or a pocket watch, except Ingrid had been studying the young woman today and could sense neither of those objects about her person.

  "Well, I've found something," Ava said, tugging a small object from her apron pocket and tossing it in the air. It was a clockwork ball. "This was at the crime scene. It's a Doeppler orb, designed to release a pressurized gas once the timer releases the clockwork lock on the mechanism. They were first used in that blood frenzy case the Nighthawks investigated a few years ago. The gas drove several blue blood lords to commit terrible murders against their servants and families."

  Ingrid knew the case. Several of the mechs who had worked with the humanists she'd run with had created the orb before going off on their own to mount a half-baked scheme against the ruling Echelon. Ingrid set the lists aside in interest. "Do you think that's what happened to that girl? Did a blue blood dip into the blood frenzy and tear her apart?"

  "I'm not certain. It doesn't have the same chemical components as the blood frenzy gas, and it didn't affect me in that way. I've been speaking to your friend, Jack, down in the laboratory, and neither of us can identify the gas, but after I took a sniff, I had the most unusual sense of dizziness. It doesn't effect your friend Jack, and I think it has to do with the fact that he's human and I'm a blue blood."

  "You actually smelled a gas that was notorious for driving blue bloods insane?"

  "I took precautions," Ava replied.

  "I should hope so." Ingrid slid closer, examining the orb. "So you think this was used to incapacitate the blue bloods? Somehow?"

  "Possibly," Ava replied. "I only found one, so the kidnappers might have collected them following the assault."

  "Which argues for quite a few people involved."

  Ava's gaze grew distant. "This is quite a dilemma, isn't it? I knew the moment Malloryn was involved that we were facing something big, but it frightens me somewhat to think of how important this work could be."

  Ingrid turned the clockwork ball over in her hand. The two halves had popped open, but when she pressed them together, they fit back neatly. "The general public don't know the particulars of the blood frenzy cases," she said, slowly. "Only the humanists who were involved, the mechs who stole the device, and the Nighthawks who investigated were aware of what this is, and how it was used."

  Ava's gaze lifted to hers. "You think whoever is involved in this is someone that we know? Or who has some connection to the blood frenzy case?"

  "It has to be someone who knew what a Doeppler orb could do." Ingrid turned her head on an angle, her thoughts scattering as the ticking became louder. "What is that ticking sound?"

  Ava froze. "Ah, that's my heart."

  "Heart?"

  The young woman looked away in distress. "I have a clockwork heart, Miss Miller. Not by choice, however."

  Sometimes Ingrid was perceptive enough to pick up on certain emotions, and the look on Ava's face told her not to press. "My apologies for bringing it up. And you may call me Ingrid. I'm not used to polite company, and 'Miss Miller' sounds like you're speaking to someone else."

  "Oh?"

  Ingrid smiled. "I've spent most of the last decade skulking in and out of back alleys and taverns, or in the tunnels of Undertown. I'm more at home with people cussing at me rather than playing polite."

  Ava's expression softened. "Well, I've been with the Nighthawks for three and a half years, so I guess that I'm more accustomed to people cussing at me too."

  "People?" Ingrid asked. "Or just Byrnes?"

  Ava laughed and patted a hair into place. "Actually, he's the exception. He's terribly polite when it comes to me, though I've heard him speak when he thinks I'm not around."

  A little fluttery feeling ignited in her chest. She couldn't quite describe it, but it had something to do with how polite Byrnes was to Ava. "Oh. That's... nice of him."

  "I'll attempt the autopsy on that girl in a minute, so we should know more by this evening," Ava said, standing and heading for the door. "But Kincaid found something at the enclaves and wants me to have a look at it first." She stifled a yawn, and Ingrid realized that Ava, as a blue blood, would most likely be sleeping through the day if not for this mission.

  "You're going to be pursuing the lab work here then?" Ingrid asked, following the other woman.

  "It suits me. It's what I've been doing for the past three years at the guild, and I've never been very good in the field." Ava grimaced. "My heart has limited capacity for pumping blood, and I can exert myself only to a certain point, which makes field work out of the question."

  Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't ask. She wanted to, however. She'd never heard of a clockwork heart. Most mechs had mechanical limbs, or other less complicated internal organs, like chest pumps instead of lungs. How could you keep someone alive whilst you installed a new mechanical heart inside them?

  "Well, that sounds like an ideal pursuit for you," Ingrid said, swallowing the question down. "You'll most likely be spending some time with Jack then?"

  "We've already begun working together. He's claimed the basement laboratory, but he's allowed me a small space."

  "He would." This time Ingrid's smile was genuine. Jack was the older brother she'd never had. "Don't let him push you around. He'll use charm and smiles to get what he wants, but make no mistake, he's demanding." A thought occurred. "If you think that Jack's overdoing it... will you let me know?"

  "You care for him?"

  "He's part of the only family I've known," Ingrid admitted. Along wi
th Rosa, the Duchess of Bleight, and young Jeremy, who'd set up as a candlemaker's apprentice. The three of them shared blood in truth, however, whilst she had merely been adopted into the fold when all four of them had escaped a madman.

  "Oh." Ava glanced sideways at her and Ingrid realized she'd been sounding out how well Ingrid was involved with Jack.

  "It's not like that," she hastily assured the blonde. "Jack's a brother, not... well, not like that." Nor was he likely to be interested in Ava, but Ingrid thought she'd best keep that to herself. "Do you know where Byrnes went?"

  Another look. One that slammed through her like a punch as she realized precisely what it entailed. Oh, hell. It wasn't Jack whom Ava was interested in, after all. Ava had feelings for Byrnes, and was clearly aware of the... complex relationship between he and Ingrid.

  But the pretty young woman merely smiled, an expression that didn't quite reach her eyes. "He's returned to the guild for the rest of the afternoon. Said something about examining the guild records from the blood frenzy case."

  "You told him about the orbs?"

  Ava rolled her eyes. "He was hovering in the laboratory. I didn't particularly have a choice."

  "Byrnes thinks the orb might have something to do with the woman we found, doesn't he?" And he was following a lead without her. Ingrid's blood heated. This was supposed to be their case. Not just his. It was happening again.

  Ava shrugged. "I personally disagree. A preliminary glance showed that you were correct. The woman's wounds were caused by fangs, of perhaps an inch in length. No blue blood has fangs." Consternation flickered over her heart-shaped face. "Though some do file their teeth into sharpened points. Still... The length is almost half an inch long, so it couldn't be a blue blood."

  "Then we still have no idea what did this." Frustration burned through her. When she got her hands on him....

  "No," Ava said with a sigh. "But we know what didn't."

  * * *

  INGRID CLUNKED down the stairs to the laboratory that was located in the cellars. She and her friend, Jack, had been called in three days ago to help Malloryn set up this network, and Jack had been poking around down there ever since.