by J. I. Radke
Cain felt himself bending to that heated stare, to the arm snaking around his waist, and his heart leapt—goose bumps chased his fingertips—the blond man’s hand slid shamelessly to brush along his upper leg, so dangerously and deliciously close to finding the nearby sign of reckless desire. Ah, this could be the start of something, Cain decided with a guilty chuckle against the blond man’s hungry mouth. Something that endured in secrecy—every nobleman had a lover—
Gunshots ripped through the night and everything but instinct came screeching to a halt.
In an instant the tryst was abandoned. Indeed instinct kicked in, consuming all rational thought and focus.
Footsteps scraping on the flagstone, Cain dodged out of the garden. He dove beneath the stone of the courtyard arcades, pressing into the shadows of a mossy pillar and flipping up the end of his cloak. He dropped his mask as he drew his gun. The click of the hammer cocking gave him an excited shiver.
This was the life of a Dietrich, after all.
Guests scattered. Cain watched from the shadows of the arcades. Some ran for cover, flocking in his direction or stumbling for the ballroom doors, while yet others panicked on the courtyard stone. The waitstaff slammed shut the doors to the ballroom and screams echoed, demanding they be opened again. And where the hell was Security? Hazel, Percy, Mr. Collins—those damned servants were hardly good at anything else. So where were they?
More bullets flew, this time shattering abandoned glasses of port and brandy, tearing through bushes and trees, spraying water, and marring the stone of the fountain, popping the fronts of lanterns strung along the courtyard. And good, it sounded like the shooter was outside, probably up on the balconies somehow. Cain craned out of the shadows, trying to see the closest terrace.
There, almost directly overhead, in a black mask—there was a blond boy aiming what looked like a semiautomatic pistol. Cain shot twice in his direction, then ducked back into the shadows as bullets rained down on the cobbles in response, chipping the pillar he hid behind and scarring the stone walkway. Cain’s fingers were ice-cold.
Guests cried out at the sounds of open fire. It seemed there was more than one shooter aiming at him. It was a group attack on the house. And a pathetic one at that, Cain decided. It was clearly not an ambush with intentions of bloodshed. The attackers wouldn’t have been relying on handguns, reckless aim, and disorderly fire if they were on a mission like that.
No, this was something worse than that—this was another brazen act of provocation, a scare tactic, a show of skill and defiance, and it was meant to do nothing else but piss Cain off.
He didn’t quite register the screams around him beyond the sharp urgency of the moment as he shoved through the throbbing, panicked crowd, packed against the side of the manor like a bunch of animals. He ran along the flagstone walk. The moonlight passed in streaks through the vines over the arcades. He followed around to the opposite side of the courtyard, where he could plainly see the balcony on which the blond man had been.
But the blond man was gone, and as Cain skidded to a stop behind another column, he found Hazel, pulling revolvers from under her maid’s layers and already aiming for the redhead on the roof who had taken the blond man’s place.
“Fuck,” Cain hissed, crouching down behind Hazel with a hand on her shoulder to keep his balance.
Hazel pulled the trigger.
Cain braced against the kick, watching over her shoulder. The redhead danced around a few shots, then returned fire with wild abandon, hollering something utterly inaudible above the panic of the guests. Bullets shredded through the trees of the courtyard, ricocheted off the wrought iron garden chairs and tables. Cain moved behind the stone column again. There was Weston, herding everyone inside through the northwest servants’ doors.
Lead scattered from above the courtyard, hitting the column a few feet over Cain’s head. Shards of granite and Portland stone tumbled down in clouds of dust. Cain ducked around the other side of the pillar and listened to the fight for a moment or two. The shots from the roof weren’t constant now, just defiant replies to the shots Dietrich Security fired from below. From somewhere overhead came the sound of a shout, a few dull thuds, and a clatter. It sounded like Mr. Collins and Percy had split up from Hazel and hurried upstairs to surprise the attackers there. A small pepperbox rifle clattered down from the balcony above, and Cain made a mental note to snag it afterward. If he knew the model and distributor, he could determine possible suspects—
Hazel threw an empty gun down in exchange for her second, but then there were footsteps, crunching on shattered granite. Cain stiffened. Had the attackers sent someone down below or was that Hazel moving closer?
The movement stopped on the opposite side of the pillar. Cain sank down into a crouch, searching for a shadow to judge by. But whatever shadow might have been cast slanted into the swarm of shadows of the arcades, far from helpful. Hazel was over there somewhere, after all.
“Don’t worry,” someone said in a cool whisper from behind—and Cain recognized the voice instantly. It was the young blond man in the black mask from earlier.
Cain’s heart gave a little flutter, and he felt the pinpricks of a shameful blush. God, but why was he so excited? How had his interest for the night been so irreparably ensnared? He pressed back against the granite again, narrowing his eyes at the other side of the courtyard and watching for movement on the roof and balconies. He readjusted his clammy grip on his revolver and hissed, “You really decided to stay out here when all the guests were ushered in?”
“I have no intention of dying tonight,” the masked man vowed. Cain uttered a gentle scoff. The young man chuckled, and Cain heard the click of a hammer from the other side of the stone column. This was as dark and impure as the confessional booth felt to him, full of lovely secrets and sins and the chill of not looking each other in the eye.
“I have no intention of accepting responsibility for your death, you know—” Cain spat, borrowing the blond man’s overzealous words.
“I would never expect it from you, my friend. Being prepared does not make it your responsibility to accept.”
“Prepared, ha! I’m always prepared. Well, whatever, perhaps you can just repay your host with good aim—”
There was a short silence. And then, from the other side of the column:
“O Death, what do you mean?”
“Get your head out of your ass!” Cain hissed. “I’m the Earl under all this ugly garb!”
There was a brief spray of bullets between those on the ground and the last of those on the upper eaves of the manor, until finally the redheaded one yelled something—something Cain couldn’t hear from below the arcades.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, the shooting stopped.
The whole foray had lasted maybe only ninety seconds, but it was another long minute or two before Cain stood again, legs cramping and hands quivering like they always did at the end of such events. He pressed his face to the cool granite column, trying to reclaim a bit of composure. He wasn’t sure if he was more shaken up or just infuriated by the situation, and for a moment, breathing was difficult and he panicked at the possible advent of an anxiety attack.
“Hazel!” he called cautiously. He heard the clatta-clack of her gun as she lowered it. He glanced over, meeting her eyes.
And the young man in the black mask was gone.
Damn it all to hell.
He hadn’t even gotten his name—
Cain moved out from under the arcades, kicking some chipped granite and stone as he trudged into the courtyard. The pepperbox rifle was gone. An eerie silence had fallen, the terror of the guests a muted roar from inside the house.
“My lord!” Hazel beckoned from the shadows, deeply and professionally concerned. “My lord, it’s not yet safe—”
“No.” Cain scowled. “It’s safe. I know it. They’ve retreated. They weren’t here to kill, just to crash the party.” He shook his head, hands still shaking. “Hazel, meet the r
est of Security upstairs and search the house. If you find anyone, hold them in the kitchen. It was probably some petty gang or something.”
Hazel hesitated, then nodded curtly and took off toward the servants’ doors, her little plaited braids coming loose at the nape of her neck. Bushes rustled as a lone waiter climbed from his hiding spot among them. Cain slid his gun back into its holster and surveyed the damage.
The courtyard was a mess of broken dishes, tattered foliage, holes in the cobbles, and dropped food and drinks. Cain’s fingers twitched into fists, and he kicked a shard of fine china, watched it shatter into smaller pieces a few feet away.
Yes, a petty gang, he was more than certain of it. A gunslinging street gang who thought it fell on their shoulders to pose riots and stage rebellions in the name of the family who hated the Dietrichs as much as the Dietrichs hated them.
“Fucking Ruslaniv bastards!” Cain howled, kicking a few more broken dishes. He felt like a child throwing a fit, but there was no one there to hear except for a few scattered servants and Weston.
Jaw tight, Cain propped one hand on his hip and cradled his temple in the other. How ridiculous he probably looked, how comical, all painted and done up and screaming and stomping.
“Weston,” he mumbled, “were there any injuries?”
“Scrapes and bruises, sir. One young lady was grazed on the shoulder. She collapsed from fright soon after, I’m afraid, and another man in the initial frenzy twisted his ankle. As it stands, those are the only grave injuries.”
“Lovely,” Cain whispered, dropping both hands and taking a deep breath. “At least there’s no need to fill out another civilian casualty report for the queen—just mass hysteria left for me to deal with. And, I suppose, this mess out here to clean up. I’ve sent Security in to search the house, but I’m sure they’ve all fled already.”
Cain kicked a dirty fork, watching it skitter forward along the stone. The rush of the fight was starting to fade, leaving not much else but cold, distilled hatred for the Ruslanivs and their unruly gangs. Not much else, sure, except for the bruising frustration of the night being ruined right when he’d decided to have a good time for once. He’d been on the right course for a little bit of ass tonight too!
“Just start cleaning up out here, all of you,” he grumbled. “I’ll go calm the crowd….”
“Yes, my lord,” Weston murmured, dropping low in a bow.
“Damn those Ruslaniv dogs and all their supporters!” Cain stormed around a lawn chair someone had knocked down in their panic. He left Weston and the other servants to clean, and by the time he slipped back inside to a sobbing Emily and a fuming Aunt Ophelia, he had a splitting headache to go with the subsequent tremble of such a demanding affair.
And quite a few guests to placate.
Damn those Ruslaniv dogs.
SCENE FOUR
LEVI THOUGHT of everything he’d ever heard about the young Earl Dietrich, and the cool night air felt good on his flushed skin.
Maybe it was the last of the thrill from the gunfight, a rusty exhilaration that he hadn’t felt so fresh and hot in a long time. Or maybe it was the liquor he’d snatched before hopping the outer wall of the manor, throwing back one gulp after another like a man on the streets flirting with death. Or maybe it really was just the rush of having been so close to the Dietrich head, close enough to shove his tongue in the Earl’s mouth, to wrap his fingers around that pretty little neck and—
Damn!
There were a few things commonly known about the young Earl Dietrich, the first being that of his general peculiarity. It wasn’t exactly every other day a powerful and infamous household was run by a lord of nineteen, let alone one as ruthless and methodical as the one in question.
Then there was the matter of the Earl’s disappearance a few years back, when his parents had been murdered… and the matter of his random return.
Although Levi knew the circumstances of the Earl’s kidnapping, those of his homecoming were still unexplained.
Lastly there was the fact that his eyes were a color somewhere between winter-sky gray and pale blue, a failure of pigmentation from birth that had just never gone away. That had been one of the favorite topics a few years ago, back when the Earl Dietrich had just been the heir. Over bonbons and vodka, they’d laughed in Ruslaniv parlors and salons about how weak the Dietrich genetics seemed to be, spitting out an heir with colorless eyes. Probably the result of incest. Or perhaps it was God’s curse on them for their sins—whatever sins those were. The sins his family loathed the Dietrichs for.
Levi had seen them for himself, those pale colorless eyes, while he’d sat above Lovers’ Lane one unfortunate, sludgy afternoon. God damn it all, he should have known when he’d seen the “Death of the Ruslanivs” and felt that those haunting eyes beyond all the paint were familiar!
Levi squinted into the empty liquor bottle, wondering if there was even a sip left. Drinking so much so fast had rendered him a little dizzy.
He thought about the Earl and the way the lights had danced in that colorless stare. He’d been so guarded and mysterious in that mocking costume of his, which he himself had admitted was not his style. What a terribly bewitching creature, so dark and beautiful—like a stormy sky—and his kisses had been so hot and inviting—
Damn, damn, damn!
Levi doubled over, wondering if he might be sick.
It seemed utterly melodramatic to him, more like vicious butterflies ripping him apart from the inside.
He’d been so close to the Earl Dietrich, this heir of the house his own family hated, this notorious lord he’d only ever seen from a careful distance. He’d been so close he could have killed him with his own two hands.
And he hadn’t.
He didn’t loathe himself for tangling with the Earl when he’d been unaware, but—under those mossy arcades, when his heart had fallen and he’d realized that the little cloaked figure of Death was the earl it was in his blood to despise, he could have killed him, and he hadn’t!
In betrayal of some sick sense of loyalty or twisted justice that really didn’t move him one way or the other at all, he’d felt a strange, inchoate shiver deep inside, like the first whispers of an inner renaissance. He’d fled as if fleeing would really stop an inner awakening of something numb and deadened. He’d fled.
Levi sat with his back against the wall of the Dietrich grounds, glaring into the empty bottle where it reflected light from the windows on the other side of the Lincolnshire wall, and he was in awe. It was a cold, wondrous emptiness like the feeling of rage without any of the resentment.
Odd.
There was a rustle in the foliage outside the wall, a muffled hiss of “There! Found him!” before Eliott tumbled out of the bushes with quite a few leaves stuck in his hair and his suit coat falling off one shoulder, glasses on and mask casually stuck atop his head. His tinted spectacles were in his breast pocket. The Blond One followed, in his purple brocade, and behind him, the One with Glasses, tailed by the Witch and William, all looking a bit disheveled and reckless but satisfied all the same.
Eliott came to a stop in front of Levi, perhaps not as steady on his feet as he should have been, and Levi threw him a proud smirk.
“You know,” he said decidedly, “I have a pretty capable team if the lot of you managed to pull that off drunk.”
“I’m not drunk, I’m tipsy,” Eliott insisted, tossing bothersome hair out of his face. He grinned down at Levi with a suspicious gleam in his eye, and Levi’s smile faded.
“What’s that look for?” he asked, but the Witch interrupted.
“They didn’t even search the damn place!” she cried triumphantly. Surely she was freezing with what little she wore below the fur-collared coat so kindly offered by William. “Well, I mean, Will, that one guard almost caught you, but you weren’t being careful. Really, it’s like they didn’t even care!”
“It’s because they don’t care,” the One with Glasses replied, so cold and calculating,
per usual. “It was a taunt and nothing more, and they knew that. Why would they search for tricksters when they can just strike back later?”
“Good point,” Levi agreed, jabbing a finger in his direction.
It should have been sickening, how right he was. How these things were so normal, such commonplace events all throughout New London. Gunfights and threats, games of back-and-forth with bullets. Tag, you’re it. What’s your move, white? What a world to live in, where it was just the natural way of things to continually shoot at one’s neighbor until finally someone really got hurt, and then everyone was outraged like they had no idea how someone could do such a thing.
Eliott waved his hands, frantic with a sudden thought. Levi suffered a gnawing feeling of dread it had something to do with the dark gleam in his eyes. “Listen, be quiet for a second—Levi, we’ve got an idea, and I think you’re going to like it….”
All at once, the other members of BLACK circled closer, like ravens over the dead on street corners, excitement quickening their faces. And, in their shadows, Levi felt his stomach drop.
“Do you, now?” he whispered.
SCENE FIVE
“IT WAS the Earl in that disgusting costume—”
“Can you believe his audacity?”
“Ooh, I just wanna make him bleed—”
“Levi, you held a conversation with the Earl!”
And kissed him too, and surely the Ruslanivs’ enemy shouldn’t have tasted so sweet and ready for action.
“Disrespectful—atrocious—mocking us like that, so flagrantly—”