by Bec McMaster
Every action she made was because of that monster. Every time she denied herself what her body wanted, it was because he lingered there in the background.
And damn him, but she was tired of listening to his ghost. She had more important things to think about than a man who'd been rotting for over four years.
"Any reason for this sudden change?" Gibson asked, watching her carefully.
"No." Yes. She sighed. "Kincaid told me he has a degenerative disease. There's no cure for it."
Gibson added a cube of sugar to his tea. "That's the fellow who's been working with you? And this bothers you, because...."
"I have feelings there," she admitted quietly, taking another sip of tea. "He hates blue bloods, but he likes me. And I suggested the craving might heal him, but... he rejected the idea."
"Do his feelings extend to match yours?"
"I don't know." She dwelled on everything Kincaid had told her yesterday. "He said if he wasn't ill, then he'd... consider being with me. But he doesn't want me to watch him slowly die, and he doesn't want to pass on his illness to any children." All her secret hopes and dreams were the antithesis of Kincaid's.
"Sometimes it just doesn't work, lass."
She nodded sadly, her throat tightening, before she ruthlessly drained her tea. "Sometimes it doesn't." But she had to try. And she'd be damned if she'd let either Kincaid's or her own pride ruin their burgeoning romance. "I'd best be going. He'll be back at Malloryn's by now, and I think best when I can bounce ideas off him."
She set her cup and saucer aside.
"Be careful, Ava." Gibson gave her the folder containing all his notes on the case so far. "You deserve more than a broken heart."
It might be a little too late for that.
* * *
Fickle light trickled in through the steam cab’s window as Ava tried to transcribe the notes she'd made after talking to Dr. Gibson.
The streets were quiet, all her leads drying up. She needed a dash of inspiration to break this case.
Rewinding the ECHO recording device Fitz—the Nighthawks mechanical genius—had created several years ago, she pressed Play and heard her own voice fill the carriage. "...is it the SOG or the dhampir group behind all of this... Zero's death argues for dhampir involvement, but—"
The cab hit a bump, and Ava's thumb slid off the button as she jolted. Her paperwork slid forward on her lap, and she hastily snatched it up. If the hackney driver thought he was going to charge her full rate for this ride, she'd be reminding him of the rough journey.
Ava pressed the button again. "...who killed Winthrop? Why? Did they know we were there? Were they watching the shop? Or... were they watching us?"
Another jolt. Ava looked up from the recorder, scowling a little. "Is everything all right out there?"
The steam carriage's boilers suddenly hissed, and then she was flung back in the seat as the carriage lurched forward.
"Hello?" she called, her clockwork heart beating steadily in her chest even as her head swam with a sudden surge of fright. The worst thing about her replacement heart was its monotone beat. Her body might be preparing itself to flee, but her heart ground inexorably on at its regular pace, and denied her the rush of blood she sometimes needed in these situations.
They veered to the right and Ava slammed up against the carriage door, crumpling the blinds, which revealed a searing flash of a green park rushing past the window, surprised faces turning to the carriage as it went by.
Something wasn't right.
The boiler was hissing at a frightful pitch. Ava shoved the blinds up, gasping as she saw the London streets rushing by. What on earth had happened to the driver? She wound the windowpane down, poking her head through the opening. The flap of a man's black split-tail coat was the only thing she could see of the driver.
"Excuse me!" she cried, gripping the windowsill in both hands. "Are you all right? What's going on? Why are we rushing—"
A gloved hand reached out, and as she watched, slid the carriage into a higher gear.
A thrill of nervousness lit through her.
He had to have heard her, but why would he be ignoring her? Or pushing the carriage to its utmost limits in these busy streets? This was madness. Someone was going to get hurt.
"Hey!" a man yelled—as if to prove her point—leaping out of the way.
"Stop!" Ava screamed. "You're going to run someone over!"
Or worse. What happened if they struck a building, or an omnibus? There were still horse-drawn trams in this section of London, weren't there?
Ava's breath caught. She couldn't help remembering the last time she'd been trapped in a carriage like this, her father's horses dancing in their traces as a man stepped out of the shadows and shot her driver off the seat. For a second she saw Hague's face superimposed over the driver in front of her as he glanced behind him. "Not now," she whispered grimly.
Hague was dead. This was an entirely new set of circumstances, and the last thing she needed was to lose herself when she was the only person who might be able to stop the carriage.
The driver gathered his feet beneath him, and then launched himself into the foggy afternoon.
Ava screamed as the carriage rocketed forward. He'd left her here! No. He'd deliberately locked the steering wheel, veering them directly toward a busy intersection ahead.
All the heat drained out of her face. Dozens of people looked up, pointing at the carriage. A child screamed, and his mother turned around frantically, looking for him in the sudden surge of a frightened crowd.
Shoving at the door, Ava found it locked, which should have been impossible. A swift glance down revealed a wrench thrust through the handle. She scrambled across the seat, only to find the same thing on the other side.
Trapped.
Please.... She hadn't survived a madman only to die now. Ava shook the door, slamming her shoulder against it. Would she even die in a crash? Or would the cursed craving virus resurrect her?
The window...
...was too narrow to fit her bustle through. Goddamned fashion.
Tugging out the lady's pistol Malloryn insisted she carry, she shot the lock off the door. The handle remained jammed shut. Ava leaned back on the seat and kicked it with her feet, forcing all her blue blood strength into the action.
The door jarred. Screams sounded through the open window. "Come on, damn you!" she kicked again, and this time part of the door panel broke free. Lace ripped along her sleeve as she forced the panel open, hammering at it with her heel one more time, and them scrambling across the seat to shove the door away.
It hit the cobbles, tumbling end over end, and leaving her free to remove the wrench. Grabbing her parasol from within, she hooked it over the top of the carriage roof and dragged herself up there somehow, clinging to the edges as her skirts choked her legs.
The intersection loomed. Someone honked a carriage horn furiously, its tinny squeal trying to clear the crossing. People scrambled out of the way, but there was far too much traffic clogged in the sudden panic.
She caught sight of a little girl crying, her pinafore stained with red lolly, and Ava forced herself to move.
The parasol was gone in the rush. Ava slithered along the roof, her hair whipping back in the wind as she tumbled forward onto the driver seat in front. Steam hissed past her from the boiler. The red arrow in the gauge trembled as it ticked dangerously into Warning territory.
It all happened so quickly. Ava tried to release the locked steering wheel, but the driver had jammed a bloody umbrella under it to hold it in place and the cursed thing was stuck. Lashing out with her foot, she broke it in two, then wrenched on the wheel just as they hit the intersection.
A carriage flashed past. The little girl's pinafore flapped in the wind and she cried out, the sound whipping into the distance. All Ava could see was a brick wall looming ahead of her, each brick carved out with precise mortar, as if her vision had sharpened, and she gasped in a breath and threw herself off the side—
The impact stole her breath.
Ava tumbled head over heels on the cobbles until she fetched up in a bruised mess against the gutter. A concussive explosion of sound forced her to fling her arms over her head as the carriage slammed into the brick wall. Screams echoed in the thoroughfare. Horns blared as a man on a steam-powered rickshaw tried to veer around the wreckage, and smashed into a gaslight. Her corset suddenly had steel teeth and they were closing around her lungs hungrily. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. The world was a mess of noise, and light, and people everywhere.
Then it was all over.
"Oh my goodness!" a woman blurted, staring at the wreck. "Oh my goodness."
The woman kept repeating herself, even as others came to her rescue.
"Are you all right, miss?" There was a gloved hand in front of Ava's face as she looked up into a man's face, or what she could see of it over the scarf wrapped around his throat. He was wearing a newsboy's cap covering his hair, and had pale blue eyes that seemed almost arctic in their intensity.
Her head spun.
Her shoulder ached from the impact, but there were other people in front of her who were hurt worse than she was. If there was one good thing about the craving affliction, it was the fact she could survive almost anything. Including a runaway carriage. "I'm fine," she said, sitting up and swaying slightly.
"That's a shame." Something sharp pricked her upper arm.
Ava blinked as she stared up into his face. What had he—? She felt the first faint chill down her arm, her body suddenly loose and weak as she sprawled back onto the cobbles. Nothing. Not a twitch in her limbs. Her steady, dependable heart kept ticking as if nothing was wrong, but she was screaming on the inside. She couldn't feel her feet or her hands, but her eyes still moved as the man loomed over her, peeling back one eyelid to stare down at her.
Trapped inside a body that no longer worked.
Hemlock. He'd used hemlock on her. The poison had an adverse reaction on a blue blood, paralyzing them for up to ten minutes, depending on the level of craving virus in the blood.
"That's better," he crooned softly. "Won't be long now, Miss McLaren."
McLaren? Her throat tightened. What was going on? First her driver tried to kill her, and now.... That was when she saw the split tail of his coat.
He'd been the one who locked the steering wheel on the carriage and tried to force her off the road.
What had happened to the driver she'd first hired?
He saw it in her eyes. "Nothing personal, you see. Just doing what I'm told." Rubbing at his cap, he dislodged it just enough for her to see his hair, and suddenly it all made a horrid sort of sense.
His extremely pale skin.
His icy blue eyes, so translucent they looked like a glacier.
His hair, a shock of white that resembled the down of a swan.
The scarf, gloves, hat, and coat, which covered as much of his sun-sensitive skin as possible.
For the last month they'd been searching for one of the dhampir that conspired against them, and here one was, right in front of her.
"Hey," another man said. "Do you need help? What's happened?"
"She's all right," the dhampir said, swinging Ava up into his arms, where she had no choice but to flop as though she'd come down with the vapors. "My wife was feeling poorly this morning, and I guess she's taken ill from the shock. I'll get her home and tuck her up in bed. She'll come round soon enough."
"Aye, good luck to you." The stranger surveyed the scene helplessly, even as sirens began to peal somewhere nearby. "What a mess. Good luck with your wife." "Thanks."
Ava made a choking sound in her throat as the dhampir carried her away from the carnage, though she couldn't so much as cry out for help.
"Let's get you someplace private," the dhampir murmured, "where we can have a little chat."
Eighteen
"WHERE IS SHE?" Kincaid demanded, leaping from the carriage almost before it had finished moving. Gemma and Charlie had made a mad dash for the guild, but he and Malloryn were using Malloryn's tracking device.
"Give me a moment," the duke replied tersely. Malloryn had insisted when they first started working with him that a tracking beacon be implanted beneath their skin at the back of their hairlines. It was some sort of gadget the Nighthawks had come up with. The compass hand spun, heading directly to the south. "There."
They both looked to the south.
Some sort of crowd gathered, hovering around the crossroads ahead of him. A chill ran down Kincaid's spine. They were too late. He just knew it.
Slamming past people, he shoved through the crowd. A carriage was smashed against a wall, the under-carriage snapped in two with the force of the impact, flames licking around the boiler.
"What happened?" Kincaid demanded, and a young girl beside him babbled about a runaway carriage, and a woman on top who'd steered it into the wall.
"What did she look like?" He grabbed her by the shoulders, and only refrained from shaking her when she began babbling in fear.
"I don't know! A lady. Dressed in green—"
"Pale green?" That was what Ava had been wearing when she left the house that morning.
The girl nodded in fright.
"Where is she now?"
"I didn't see what happened to her," the girl blurted.
"Leave her be," the duke commanded, turning this way and that through the crowd. "She's not here. She went this way." Malloryn started running.
Why would she leave the scene of the crime? Kincaid sprinted after the duke, his coattails flapping. "It's unlike her to leave injured people behind."
"Agreed." The duke paused in the next intersection. The arrow spun. "This way."
Left. Down a smaller street, then across another. "You think she's been taken?"
"Possibly," Malloryn called, sliding to a panting halt as he stared up at a small house across the street from them. "Unless she was injured and the craving virus overtook her. Then she might have sought privacy, away from any potential victims."
That made sense too.
Malloryn's head tilted sharply. His face paled. "I can hear her. She's in there." Kincaid shoved past him, and the duke caught him at the gate to a small Georgian townhouse.
"Have you got your pistol?" he demanded.
"Do I need it?" Kincaid replied.
"I don't know." Malloryn pushed on ahead of him, snapping the tracking device shut. "But I can hear Ava screaming. Be ready for anything."
* * *
The oddest thoughts kept running through Ava's head as she tried to still her panic. CV levels: 23 percent. And seven minutes of paralysis... possibly more. Seven and a half? Ava groggily forced herself to count. Curse her confounded desire to not drink blood. If she had, then perhaps her CV levels would be higher, and she might have begun to pull out of this already.
As it was, 23 percent CV levels meant at least eight minutes’ worth of paralysis via hemlock, she deduced, as the stranger used his shoulder to push through a door into a small house, and what was clearly a kitchen. Every blue blood reacted to hemlock differently, depending upon how far gone they were with the craving and what their CV levels were.
A teakettle hissed on the stove, and sirens wailed in the distance. Ava was nothing but a passenger, a witness in her own body, unable to control a single thing about her destiny. The last time she'd felt like this was when Hague kidnapped her.
"Bloody thing," the dhampir muttered, wincing at the kettle's high-pitched whistle, and then looking up as the stairs creaked beneath the weight of someone.
Don't come down, Ava wanted to scream, but nothing was working, least of all her throat muscles. She could barely even breathe.
"Aye, aye," a woman's voice called down the stairs, "I'll put the bloody cat out, you old fool. It's the least—"
The woman's voice cut off. Ava couldn't see what happened, but she heard the gasp.
"Here now! What are you doing in here? What have you done to that poo
r girl—"
The dhampir smoothly drew his pistol and it retorted with a sharp bark.
No! A choked noise came from Ava's throat. His body had turned just enough for her to see the little old lady go down like a puppet with its strings cut, tumbling down the last three steps, and Ava's fingers twitched.
"Shit," the dhampir muttered, slinging Ava into a chair and propping her there, before he crossed to the corpse and scraped a hand over his mouth. "Shit, shit, shit."
"Geraldine?" a man's voice called from upstairs. "What happened? I thought I heard a bump? Did that blasted cat trip you up?"
Nine minutes.
She was starting to come round. She could feel her feet at least. Ava flopped and wiggled, throwing her body to the side as much as possible. The chair tipped on two legs... then went over with a bang, sending her sprawling onto the floor where she hit her head and split her lip.
She ignored the pain. Please, please let the old man have heard me....
The dhampir took the stairs two at a time, his pistol held against his thigh. No. No! An almost moan came from her lips.
"Here now—"
Three gunshot retorts echoed and Ava gasped hopelessly as something heavy hit the floor above.
She had to get out of here.
The dhampir seemed unlike the Zero they'd all spoken of last month. "Zero moved almost faster than I could see," Kincaid had muttered when Ava fixed up his nose.
"Took down Byrnes, and he's good," Ingrid had added.
This fellow seemed young and inexperienced. Maybe he was freshly made? A new agent of the faceless enemy that worked against them. Maybe she could use that.
A cat hissed somewhere in the house, and more gunfire echoed. There was a furious animal snarl, and then a curse. Something smashed. The cat hissed again.
Come on. Ava swallowed, trying to make her fingers move again. The paralysis finally seemed to be wearing off, and there was a rush of heat through her veins as if the craving virus fought off the hemlock within her. She could smell blood. Geraldine's. The sudden surge of interest from the darker side of her locked on it, and Ava instinctively quashed it down, before realizing the craving could help her. In a heightened state of bloodlust, a blue blood was stronger, faster, even more deadly.