Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy

by Bec McMaster

  So Byrnes repeated himself.

  This time he watched their faces. The moment he mentioned the metamorphosis, Barrons's gaze cut to Malloryn's. "Do you think it's possible?"

  "Do you think what is possible?" Byrnes was tired of being kept in the dark. "Who the bloody hell is this Zero?"

  Malloryn swirled his blud-wein, staring into its bloodied depths as though he could see the future within the liquid. "The question is not who is Zero? The question is, what precisely is Zero."

  "Annabelle Underwood was a young woman who was sentenced to a mental asylum when she was barely sixteen," Barrons explained. "On the official register, Annabelle conveniently passed away at the age of twenty, following some sort of incident where she contracted the craving virus. According to a set of secret diaries I own, she was taken under cover of night and imprisoned in Falkirk Asylum, a private facility where she was under the care of a Dr. Erasmus Cremorne. She was the first of Cremorne's test subjects. Subject 0."

  "Test subjects for what?" Ingrid demanded.

  "What is about to be said does not leave this room," Barrons told them, and any sign of a cordial young gentleman vanished. This was a future duke, dangerous and powerful.

  They both nodded. Byrnes would have promised the moon to discover this secret.

  "Cremorne was testing a serum. An elixir vitae that he was trying to resurrect out of old documents from Tibet, the birthplace of the craving virus. They spoke of... creatures beyond a blue blood. Or, what a blue blood could have been. Our understanding of the craving virus has always been narrow. It was thought that the Fade led to a blue blood turning into a vampire, and following the Year of Blood, nobody allowed a blue blood to live through the Fade, so we had no means of discovering any different. However, Cremorne's experiments prove otherwise. Using the elixir vitae to control the metamorphosis, it appears that a blue blood does not revert to a vampiric state, but evolves into something more. Something faster, stronger, far more dangerous. We call them dhampir."

  "Them?" Byrnes questioned. “How many are there?”

  Barrons exchanged a look with his wife.

  "Only one known," said the duchess, her hand sliding surreptitiously to her middle, as though she was worried. "Of the seven test subjects who survived the metamorphosis, it was thought that they had all died seventeen years ago in the fire that destroyed Falkirk."

  "Who?" Ingrid demanded. "Who is the known dhampir?"

  "The Duke of Caine," Barrons replied, with a mocking smile. "My father."

  The Duke of Caine was a recluse, by all reports, and suffered from some sort of disease. "Bloody hell," Byrnes said. "What's his state of mind?"

  "Normal," Barrons replied, "as far as we can tell. Or normal for him—he's still a cunning old bastard, meddling with people's lives, but that's not unusual. His appetite is increased, and he’s stronger and faster than I am, but he doesn't appear to like leaving his house very often. Indeed, he seems to feel the cold more, and prefers to remain by his fire, in the dark. He cannot walk in sunlight the way we do, as it burns his skin and blinds him."

  And they'd only seen Zero in daylight, Byrnes realized, if it were foggy.

  "Both a blue blood's strengths and weaknesses are exacerbated it seems," Malloryn added, draining his cup. "They have the strength of a vampire, and the speed and healing, but are not deformed or blinded as a vampire is. And although a blue blood can walk in sunlight if necessary, the dhampir cannot. Interestingly enough."

  "Not what I'd call it," Ingrid said gruffly. "Bloody terrifying is somewhat closer. After all, you missed the most obvious exacerbation—just how bloodthirsty are these creatures?"

  "Very," Barrons replied, and set his cup down. "Almost vampiric."

  Byrnes scratched at his jaw. "Zero said that a vampire was created when a blue blood in the Fade dies. That doesn't make sense. We've executed hundreds of Fade blue bloods over the years. One would presume we'd be swimming in vampires."

  "Unless there's some kind of difference in the stages of the metamorphosis," the Duchess of Casavian corrected. "Maybe there is a certain point during the metamorphosis the blue blood must reach before they can make that leap?"

  "We execute them when they reach 80 percent craving virus levels," Barrons mused. "So it must be a higher virus percentage."

  "Hold on," Ingrid said. "So you're saying that Annabelle—or Zero—was one of the test subjects that you thought was dead."

  "Yes," Barrons replied.

  "Then what happened to the rest of them?" she asked. "You say that Caine is the only other one living. What if others escaped? What if there are more, just like her?"

  A cold chill ran down Byrnes's spine. "She didn't say anything about other dhampir.”

  “Then there could be others,” Malloryn murmured.

  “What does she want?" Ingrid asked, then turned and looked at Byrnes. "She said she liked you. That she might help you become what she is. Does that mean she wants to offer you the elixir vitae?"

  "If I can find her and prove worthy, or some such nonsense." A cold hand curled around his heart. "And don't look at me like that. I'm not particularly interested in some mysterious potion. I like myself the way I am. No, she said her purpose was both vengeance and anarchy." He looked Malloryn in the eye. "Against you and the duchess in particular, and all those who fought for the revolution."

  Malloryn leaned back in his chair, his gaze distant. "Why would she have such a personal stake in vengeance? She had nothing to do with the prince consort or his rule. Neither of us ever knew her."

  "If her complaint is against you and me in particular," the duchess commented, "then it has to be something to do with the revolution. Very few people know that you, Barrons, and I practically ran it. It sounds like someone who was close to the Court, who might have been there when the prince consort was killed and knows what really transpired, might have some grievance against us."

  "And the queen?" Barrons asked. "It was her revolution, after all."

  The three of them looked between each other.

  "See that the guard is increased," Malloryn finally said. "Perhaps move her to a different bedchamber. Cancel some of her engagements until we can discover more about this Zero."

  "If someone wanted to make an attempt on the queen," Byrnes pointed out, "then she's downstairs in the garden. Supposedly along with half the people this Zero seems to want revenge upon. If I were her, I wouldn't attack the queen at the Ivory Tower, which is well guarded and practically impenetrable. I'd do it now."

  Four sets of eyes locked on him.

  And that was when the explosion sounded, the window shattering into thousands of glass shards that sliced through the air.

  TWENTY-SIX

  INGRID THREW herself at Byrnes, carrying him to the floor as glass spewed over them. Hot shards of pain lashed her thigh, weeping wet blood. What had happened? Where was—

  Then she was being shoved, quite unceremoniously, onto her back. "Are you hurt?" Byrnes demanded, fingers tracing down the silk of her skirts. "I can smell blood."

  "Saved by the bustle," Ingrid gasped, reaching down and dragging a thick spike of glass from her leg. Pain flared, but with it came the steady cold burn of the loupe. If not for the sheer volume of fabric, half her leg would have been shredded.

  A thin runnel of blood in Byrnes’s hair was his only sign of injury, and his face bore dark sooty marks. "Here," he said, picking several pieces of glass out in a peculiarly dainty way that wasn't at all like him. "Idiot woman. Diving atop me like I'm some kind of precious—"

  "I'm fine," she said, sitting up. "Byrnes, I'm fine." And you are precious. At least to me.

  "Is everybody all right?" Malloryn demanded, light on his feet like a cat. His coat was torn, and he'd lost his polished persona.

  Leo Barrons helped the duchess to her feet. From the look of it, he'd borne the worst of the assault. Shredded strips of his coat hung off him, and blood dripped from his elbow. "Below," he gasped. "The queen."

 
; "On it," Malloryn said, striding for the door. “Byrnes? Ingrid?”

  "Coming." Byrnes tugged Ingrid to her feet, then stopped to check if she was bleeding.

  "Go, you fool," she said, pushing at his chest. "It's naught but scratches."

  "I'm not used to this."

  And neither was she. But she kept her tongue as she pushed him toward the door, knowing that his fussing over her indicated the depth of his feelings. He wasn’t the type of man to tease her with love words, and so she had to find them in his actions.

  In the garden, everything was mayhem. People screamed, and here and there lay crumpled piles of silk like crushed butterflies. Smoke boiled from a pit in the ground. Servants were panicking, and none of the servant drones seemed to be working. Perhaps the explosion had fried their electrics?

  Into the mayhem stalked danger. A vampire leapt onto the sandwich table, scattering trays as it hissed at the frightened party guests.

  Ingrid whipped a silver sandwich platter off a nearby table and threw it like a discus at the creature. It launched itself over the tray and darted after a pair of screaming girls, hampered only by the panicked flight of the rest of the party guests. Too many people fled at one, distracting it as it looked for the weakest member of the herd.

  "Watch my back." Byrnes vaulted over the table, knocking a dozen platters of sandwiches and cakes to their deaths on the tiled walkway.

  “Byrnes!” Ingrid tried to follow and dragged two chairs with her. Bloody sodding skirts. With a slash of her knife, she cut away the offending lengths then went after him.

  “This way!” Byrnes sprinted through the gardens with Ingrid on his heels.

  The creature slid to a halt as the clouds suddenly parted and a wash of sunlight lit over the gardens. London's incredibly inclement weather was finally giving them a ray of hope, as it were.

  It hissed as the sunlight burned its skin, and the pair of girls in front of it screamed. One of them was Malloryn's bride, holding a sandwich platter as a shield, as though that would do any good. The vampire darted into the shadows along the garden wall.

  “Stay in the sunlight,” Ingrid told Malloryn’s fiancée. “And don’t run.”

  A small package with brass springs and ticking clockwork pieces was attached to the vampire's back, strapped into place with a leather harness.

  Ingrid's blood ran cold as she realized that it was ticking. "Byrnes! It's strapped to a bomb!"

  Just one glimpse of his ice-cold blue eyes across the expanse of grass showed her that he was thinking the exact same thing as she was. We need to get it out of here.

  Agreed.

  There were too many people—too many innocents. But how were they going to lure it away?

  Blood. They needed blood, something for the vampire to lock onto as prey. Ingrid slashed a thin cut down her arm, ignoring the flare of pain. Verwulfen blood was richer in iron than human blood, and according to most blue bloods, tasted better. Perfect.

  "Ingrid!" Byrnes bellowed, seeing what she was about.

  "Find me somewhere isolated," she shot back, darting close enough to flick her blood across the vampire's face. "Somewhere where we might be able to trap it, if that bloody thing doesn't explode!"

  Then she was running before she could even look to see if it followed.

  * * *

  THE SHAKING COLD began as Ingrid darted out into the streets, the loupe firing through her blood and bringing with it the tidal edge of berserkergang. Fear washed away, leaving her buoyed with defiance and hungry for violence.

  A fine edge to walk along. Push too far, and she'd be turning to face the vampire, careless of danger, fearless. Holding herself back meant that she wouldn't receive the burst of extra vibrancy, speed, and strength that she needed, just to stay in front.

  A hack driver swore and those who’d turned out to see what all the fuss was about gasped as they realized what was behind her. Those gasps soon turned to screams, high-pitched enough to catch the vampire's ears perhaps.

  "Don't run!" Ingrid yelled, but the lady in front of her snatched her little girl and darted down an alley. Ingrid cost herself a precious second in looking back, to see the vampire falter as it realized prey was fleeing from it. Instinct kicked in. It wanted to chase the slower, weaker prey.

  Damn, and double damn. Ingrid's arm was beginning to heal now. She cut herself again, waving her arm in the air, and the vampire's head turned, blindly tracking her.

  Byrnes met her gaze over the vampire’s shoulder, lifting his pistol into the sky and then firing. The shot ricocheted through the streets, and screams echoed nearby.

  What was he doing? Then she realized. Other streets would be just as clogged with people. If they heard the shots, maybe they'd have time to flee before she led the vampire directly toward them.

  "Ivory Bridge!" Byrnes pointed toward the half-completed bridge arching up over the Thames, and fired his pistol into the air again.

  Abandoned, thanks to the ongoing negotiations and workers strikes that had so fouled up river traffic and were causing endless headaches among the Council of Dukes. It just might work.

  "Slow it down!" She took off running just as that ugly face tilted toward her again.

  The Ivory Tower loomed in the distance; the heart of parliament, and the seat of London’s power. Ivory Bridge speared out from its southern walls, the suspension bridge hanging in parts as cranes stood motionless.

  "Come on, you ugly bastard," Ingrid muttered, leaping up onto the rail of the bridge and running along it.

  Claws lashed through the remains of her skirt, and Ingrid leapt up onto the stone base of the tower, her fingers catching in the cranny between the slabs of stone. Lashing out with a foot, she managed to catch the vampire in the face and it fell, catching a claw on the base of the bridge, its body dangling over the dirty Thames.

  Ingrid shoved upward, stabbing her fingers and shoes into the cracks as she climbed to the second span. There weren't a lot of options to take.

  Behind her the vampire scrambled up the stonework like a rat up a brick wall, and Ingrid's blood froze. Looking around revealed only a thin iron span to use as an escape route, and she swiftly realized she was going to be trapped if she—

  Something whizzed into gear on the clockwork package strapped to the vampire's back. Everything sped up, the tick, tick, tick, becoming more pronounced. The bloody creature fixated entirely on her, however, its teeth bared as it found the ledge she stood upon.

  A shot ricocheted past, snagging the vampire's attention for all of a second. "Ingrid!" Byrnes screamed. "Get clear!"

  Turning, she started to sprint along the narrow span, catching sight of a crane nestled on the battlements. Hissed breath stalked her heels, claws skittering over the iron. Jesus. She wasn't going to make it…. She wasn't— Ingrid leapt, snatching hold of the end of the crane, her body arching as the end of the chain swung wide, out over the water.

  The vampire skittered to a halt as she vanished out of its reach. It spun, making high-pitched noises, as if to find another way to get at her, but she had reached the end of the arc now, and was swinging back round—

  "Let go!" Byrnes yelled.

  The water was a flat pane beneath her, brown and murky. Ingrid's blood ran cold. High. She was incredibly high, and her hands wouldn't unlock on the chain.

  "Ingrid! It's going to explode!"

  Taking a breath and forcing herself not to think, Ingrid let go. Gravity sunk its greedy claws into her, and she plummeted like a stone, heels held straight below her. Water rushed up, and then—

  Everything went white.

  She hit the Thames hard, tossed end over end, as the bomb exploded above. A sonic boom scraped her skin raw and left her floundering in churning water. Something slashed through the water nearby, trailing a wake of bubbles, and she could see fire blooming in the sky behind it as other various bits of flotsam and jetsam struck the river and slowly sank.

  Another object cut through the river's murk, sleek and black, lik
e a knife. Then hands were dragging her up. Presumably up. She didn't know anymore, but she couldn't breathe... she had no breath left inside her.

  They broke the surface with a cough. Ingrid sucked in an enormous lungful of air, surrendering herself into Byrnes's grasp as he began to tow her toward the shore. Behind her, fire burned in patches on the river, and people were yelling and shouting as they streamed from buildings on both edges of the Thames.

  "Guess that takes care of the workers strikes," Ingrid murmured, then rested her head on Byrnes's shoulder. So tired.

  Lifting her in his arms, he waded ashore, and she didn't want to think about the stink of the river. All she could see were his eyes, wide and no longer icy, but very, very blue.

  "The vampire?" she rasped, finally looking over his shoulder.

  Most of the bridge was gone. Just gone. Sheared off like an enormous hand had reached out of the sky and torn away iron beams and rivets, leaving behind only the two stone towers in the center of the river.

  "Apparently there is only one easy way to kill a vampire," Byrnes finally said, turning with her in his arms to stare at the remains of the bridge. "I wouldn't recommend it, however, and I'm fairly certain Malloryn's not going to be entirely pleased. He said to keep our heads down."

  Ingrid simply stared. "Half of London probably saw that."

  "Indeed."

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  MALLORYN WAS not pleased.

  Fortunately, he had other matters on his mind and only gave them one snarled comment—“could you possibly have found a bigger monument to destroy”—before sending them off to tend to themselves. The fact that someone had tried to blow up the queen whilst she was at his engagement party seemed to be the bigger affront.

  Ingrid found herself settled into a steam carriage driven by a member of the Nighthawks, who were now combing the garden at Malloryn's. She didn't care anymore. She'd done her bit, and now the loupe was demanding payment. The carriage rocked as Byrnes shouldered his way through the door, and then he was settling on the seat beside her.