by J. I. Radke
“St. Mikael’s,” Cain murmured, running a finger over the papers. Police records, documents from the Yard. St. Vincent’s was so much nicer than St. Mikael’s—no, stay on topic…. “Yes, the gang connected to what happened at St. Mikael’s back then… I want to know who they are. Find them for me. They’re going to die.”
He waved a dismissive hand and turned around in his leather chair to prop his feet up against the windowsill behind his desk. Soon—but not soon enough—the meeting would be over. Thank God. All he wanted to do was look out at the brumal sun and think of Levi.
SCENE SIX
HE NEVER said, “Let’s talk of the world.” It just sort of happened.
“If heaven is for clean people, it’s got to be empty. No one is clean. Not truly. We’re sinful creatures, and that’s the way it is,” Cain declared, standing under the bowed face of the Virgin in the dark of St. Vincent’s, where he’d wanted to meet again after Levi’s task for the evening. There was something quite disturbing but beautiful about the way his guns looked along his sides. Levi had yet to actually see him use them.
“What if we all create our own hell?” Levi echoed, sprawled casually in the front pew, arms folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other. He was rather enjoying this talk of theirs and the level of leisure in the evening, the lack of formalities between them. Was that what it was to actually court someone? Was that what they were tangled up in—courtship they wouldn’t admit?
“Of course we do,” Cain husked. “And we create our own demons, and our own monsters.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps there is no hell, and no heaven either. What if the world is only what we make of it, and when we pray we’re pleading with our own conscience?”
“Ah, tell me your soul really isn’t as broken as that.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.”
If it was so, Cain wore the misery well. He climbed onto the pew and sat on his knees next to Levi, narrowing those haunting, colorless eyes in his telltale sneaky way.
“What if we were to go at it, right here in this church, right now, like animals?” he prompted. “Do you think we’d be eternally damned?”
Levi threw back his head and laughed. Ah, it was moments where Cain was not a ruthless, vengeance-driven lord, but just a mischievous little boy—moments like that that absolutely took hold of Levi’s heart.
“Turn down the lights, turn them down,” Cain hissed as he led the way into his room from the balcony one night. His room was empty, of course, at his request for privacy, and he swatted at Levi grumpily a few times before conceding to his hungry kisses and reckless embrace from behind as Levi followed him into the room. Cain turned down his own lights until they were both just silhouettes in the moonlight.
“You don’t want to see who you’re giving yourself to?” Levi teased.
“Why the hell should I?” Cain retorted, and Levi understood that what he meant was the feeling was more important than what he saw. Or perhaps the shame and self-destruction still hovered in the light, waiting to come down upon him in the safety of the shadows.
A mess of groping hands and greedy mouths, they made it to Cain’s wide four-poster bed, with its elaborate carvings in the black walnut, and the light from the fire danced under a marble mantel. Cain’s skin was flawless lily-white and possibly just as soft once Levi got his nightshirt open, trailing his fingers up and down that taut, smooth chest. Toes curled in the thick coverlets. Cain clawed at Levi’s waistcoat and collar with a wild and possessive abandon that just fired Levi up even hotter.
“I want you!” Cain gasped. “I must have you….”
“You’ll have me, you said you always get what you want when you want it,” Levi whispered back, and God, did it feel right to grind down against the stiff heat of Cain’s sex.
The bedding rustled as they moved together, hips rocking. Cain covered his face with his arms when Levi dragged his thumbs over his nipples, and then he laughed and shoved his hands down the front of Levi’s trousers. Ah, release! He was so hard and ready. Cain’s fingers were skilled. With spit and more of that breathless laughter, he welcomed Levi—practically yanked him forward—and Cain rolled over on top, sending Levi in so deep, so far—
Well, it was no wonder Father Kelvin had cherished Cain so much.
Levi dreamt one night near the end of November of angels and choirboys and getting drunk on sacramental wine. Of bullets, and steam-powered gadgets, and pulling out the angels’ wings feather by feather, and a little prince with a crown of thorns smiling down at skeletons. He dreamt of Finn, and at first he thought he was dreaming of the Earl.
It was a dreadful collision of feelings, of pain and an emptiness that might have been nostalgia or something else irretrievably lonely.
He dreamt of being fourteen, fresh out of training, and terrified he’d forget all he’d been taught before he could ever use it. The world had still been warm and full of sunlight back then, wandering through the stooping, sweeping, knotted old trees of the orchard, which had once been as big as the world before he’d learned a world existed outside the tall Ruslaniv walls. Finn was there, Finn in his plain tweed and charcoal-colored breeches, and Levi could still remember the way it felt to run his fingers through Finn’s hair and listen to him talk about how he was jealous of the carriage hand, because the carriage hand didn’t have to see the blood and the fighting like he did. Finn was one of Lord Ruslaniv’s errand boys, and Levi could taste, as if he’d just tasted it the day before, that pouty lower lip. He could feel the way Finn had shivered against him and grabbed his wrists as if to push him away. But Finn, his father’s errand boy, had only yanked him closer, and as the wind had rustled through the trees, they’d kissed and groaned and—and just like that, at the end of the summer, there was Levi’s brother, Quinton, seething and snarling, and the way the blood had splattered across the paneled walls of Levi’s old room had been strangely fascinating in the blue of the moonlight.
Levi awoke with a start, sweating and cold.
He threw back his furs and covers and moved swiftly out into the courtyard, where the stones of the patio were cold under his bare feet and the night was almost silent. He lit a cigarette and scowled up at the clouds over the moon. The Ruslaniv house was tranquil in such dead hours of the morning, when the sky was still black and nothing, no one, was stirring.
The foggy memory of Finn’s face blended with Cain’s, and Levi threw down his silver lighter and hissed, “Shit.”
He could deny it no longer.
He picked up his lighter again and slipped it into his breast pocket.
Something had changed.
It finally sank into Levi then, as he surveyed the Ruslaniv house washed in moonlight and smoked angrily, shivering and straining to shake the sick hold of his nightmare.
It sank into him that Cain Dietrich, the hated Earl, the morbid little prince wearing a crown of thorns, had become worth something to him. And any sense of loyalty to his own weary name could not make him hate that.
In fact, Levi yearned for it.
He yearned for Cain more fiercely than he’d yearned for anyone or anything in a very long time. He wanted him again and again, those damning glances and tricky smiles, and the way he laughed when they fell into bed together—and Quinton was gone, Quinton was long gone, so what was there to be afraid of?
Well, damn it all.
This was troublesome, wasn’t it?
SCENE SEVEN
“HELLO, PRINCE Charming.”
The Witch smiled at him over the pianoforte. The smile was harsh, just a shade or two of hate short of a sneer. Her blouse was unfastened over whalebone and leather, per usual, but the sight of too much bosom was one Levi had become well desensitized to.
He held his fingers over the keyboard, offering her the most uninterested stare he could muster. Behind her was William, looking uncomfortable as always. Eliott was nowhere to be seen. Across the hall, in the yawning threshold to the darkled
salon, the Blond One and the One with Glasses lingered against the marble—Claude, Levi had discovered again the other night while cracking into his second bottle of Muscovian liquor. Perhaps it wasn’t right to constantly forget the names of his own gang, but oh well.
“Yes?” Levi looked back at the Witch.
Her smile had crossed the line and become a pure simper, a few curls come loose from her tight braid and bouncing at her ears. The dark beauty mark on her left cheek made her look all the more ascetic. Gypsy, almost. She drummed her fingers atop the pianoforte, a sharp staccato of nails.
“We were just curious, darling,” she purred, and it was a shame the sound of it was so untrustworthy. “It’s been nearly a month and a half now. You’re never around. You’re gone all night. You’re neglecting your own duties as our commander. You won’t speak of what you do, except to say that you’re a ‘hidden ace’ and ‘a make-believe gunslinger for hire.’ Whatever. So how goes plan F, as it seems to be monopolizing so much of your precious time and energy?”
“Who named it plan F?” William’s mouth twisted in doubt, but it might have just been his default frown of discomfort. The Witch didn’t even spare him a glance. She rolled big brown eyes around sarcastically before settling them on Levi again, talking as if he’d been the one who’d asked.
“Plan F for Fake. Faking a friendship with the Earl, and so on. Snatching up his trust like a mole. You keep telling us it’s getting on smoothly, there’s no suspicions on his part, but—”
The Witch’s nose wrinkled in a girlish snarl. Behind her, across the front hall in the marble archway to the salon, the Blond One started laughing from behind Claude’s shoulder. Claude had pulled him tight in a suggestive embrace; everyone knew they were closer than they should have been. They must have been bored with the conversation already.
“—I want a serious update, Levi. We want a serious update. So, what’s the scoop, oh fearful and respected leader?”
Oh, he just loved it, the way she still managed to slip the mockery in there. Levi saw William fidget in the periphery. He sighed, digging around for the will to involve himself again as he met the Witch’s eyes. God, they all exhausted him sometimes. It wasn’t so much reluctance or hesitance as it was a simple loathing of the people around him, and a little stab of distress as he reminded himself his affairs with the Dietrich heir were being closely monitored. He was not the only master of this game he played.
But perhaps he was, because he was the leader of BLACK. Levi shifted, brushing a finger along a black key. He divulged, “A bridge of trust has been built between us—a strong bridge of trust. Which, I’ll remind you, is an incredibly difficult task to undertake with the Earl Dietrich. It’s taken this long to do so, anyway. But the longer that trust is nurtured, the easier it will be to take advantage of it.”
The Witch opened her mouth, and Levi narrowed his eyes. He didn’t let her speak. He was tired of listening to her.
“And,” he said curtly, “I would know more than you at this point that he’s a complex young man who requires much patience and vigilant exploration. I thought this was understood already. I thought that was why I was assigned to this little plan F of ours—because we all know I’m the only one of us who could manage such careful manipulation. God knows your temper and impulsiveness would have betrayed you right away, Witch. Listen, it’s only a matter of time now until we can utilize this bridge of trust. It’s just not the right time yet. I’m keeping wary, though, I promise. Are you satisfied?”
The Witch’s mouth shut with a sharp click of the teeth and she frowned, less severely and more in honest consideration of this. Her fingertips drummed away, nails tapping. William shifted with a terse sigh behind her. Claude and the Blond One—Petyr—were fooling around near the salon, snickering and whispering like brothers avoiding bedtime.
“I don’t understand you,” the Witch whispered over the big pianoforte, “and sometimes that scares me. You should thank Oberon every night for convincing me to trust you.”
Levi offered a thin smile, lashes lowering. He meant no real ill will as he murmured, “He crosses your mind enough, why don’t you thank him for me?”
The Witch shot him a look that was supposed to be sour, but her carefully constructed mask was failing and the knot in her throat was obvious. She turned sharply on a heel, the butt of her gun showing above the pockets of her trousers. Ah, a woman in trousers. It was shocking in the best way. She hooked her fingers in William’s sleeve, dragging him with her, and William sent Levi a glance that promised he’d talk to him further later.
Their footsteps bounced off the highest corners of the hall, voices hissing whispers as they met up with the other two. They all disappeared into the dark, dank salon, drifting away into other corners of the house, and Levi gawked at the keys on the pianoforte for a moment. Faded black, yellowed white, like the teeth of an old man, stained by too many fingers and years of sunlight pouring in through the vast multipaned windows around the room. What a sight tonight through those windows: the dark of night, the angry black shadows of trees in the fall, and the high, inescapable walls of the Ruslaniv estate.
Levi thought about BLACK. He thought about their lackadaisical missions, their capers—so safe and juvenile compared to those of the previous BLACK.
And he thought of his responsibility as the new leader—to them, as well as to his father and his name. Plan F, the Witch had called it.
Levi thought about the previous BLACK—his brother Quinton, Wolfe, Red, Vyncent, Oberon. Oberon had been the only one Levi had really liked back then. It was still scalded into Levi’s memories, like staring at the sun too long, the way half of Oberon’s arm had fallen on one side of the street as he’d reached for the Witch with the other. His blood had stained the same cobbles as Rosalie’s. And Levi had been forced to pull the Witch away after Oberon’s only hand finally dropped and the Dietrich “protective services”—done away with after the earl and his wife were murdered and the feud fell to uncultivated brutality—ran like the bunch of cowards they were.
Levi thought of the remaining heir of the Dietrichs and the way he looked when he spoke, regal and nostalgic, tragic and beautiful at the same time. Cain. Pale eyes, wispy layers of dark hair around a soft, perfect face, and the way he kissed, the way he smiled, the way he laughed. He was pretty like death, macabre and unconquerable, and all those unfailing truths of life thrown back in a man’s face.
Levi thought about the young earl’s revenge—the way his eyes flashed with hatred when he spoke of it, and when their wet mouths drew apart and breaths tumbled out after being held. With trembling fingers, he touched Levi’s face. Cain was fever hot against Levi’s chest, a silence between them in which Levi could feel his heartbeat.
The way the Earl had looked when he’d found his parents dead—the way he’d trudged along, dazed and stupid, to Wolfe and Quinton and Oberon with their open hands and wily smiles. They’d taken him to Kelvin’s then, and Levi had crumpled down and gotten sick with guilt that sludgy afternoon above Lovers’ Lane because he hadn’t stopped them.
He hadn’t stopped them!
Levi’s mouth tightened, but he wouldn’t surrender to the scowl. He slammed the cover down over the keyboard, a bang, which echoed in the nooks and crannies of the gilded hall as he shoved away from the pianoforte and stormed swiftly off, away from the silence, as if he might really flee his thoughts.
Finn, and Rosalie, and Cain Dietrich.
Ah, this had become something far more complicated than he’d ever expected. What would BLACK do if they knew how tangled this had all become? What would they say?
They couldn’t know. They couldn’t find out.
He was not in this for BLACK anymore.
He was in this for himself. And he was determined to keep it that way.
SCENE EIGHT
“WE’RE SORRY for the interruption, my lord.”
“Don’t be. It was a stifling luncheon. Look, we have a few minutes. We were to have a
meeting after I was through with Miss Emily, anyway. Regale me now as we move.”
“Yes, right, we believe the ensemble calls itself ‘BLACK.’”
“BLACK. Like the color?”
Footsteps were quick, an urgent clip through puddles, across uneven flagstone, following the shortcuts through jumbled, grimy alleys and between buildings to avoid the mayhem on the main streets—the panic, the plebeians.
There’d been a gunfight.
“Yes. And, listen to this. It’s a gang organized by the Ruslaniv house itself, not mere civilians! The group has been relatively inactive and elusive, most likely because they’ve changed members since then, but the reasons for this are unknown and the former members have been banished from New London, that we’re aware of.”
The grip of Aunt Ophelia’s pistol matched the vibrant scarlet of her blouse. She followed Cain, and around them were the Dietrich protective services, like obedient hunting hounds—Mr. Collins, Percy, Hazel, and the Persians, whispering in that smooth exotic cadence of theirs. The newest recruit, a rough retired hit man named Dominic, tailed Cain’s father’s favorite watchdogs—whom Cain had inherited with the house and the legacy—Rodney and Graham.
Down by Dmitri’s Pavilion, a rather brutal gunfight had shattered the eventless afternoon, erupting at a rally against the House of Lords. The House of Lords was political if only by the honor the Queen had bestowed upon them with such a title: that handful of the oldest and wealthiest noble families in New London, who kept in place the system of class the working men despised. Two Lords of the House were tangled in the bloodiest feud between noble names since the High War of the Roses centuries ago—and they were the Dietrichs and Ruslanivs.
The Dietrich party moved in like a pack of wolves. The closer they got to the scene, the louder the commotion on the street became.