by Bec McMaster
A lump of sadness clogged her throat. Of course Garrett would worry about her, when he was the one who'd lost his arm. "I'm fine. I was a little rattled yesterday, but Kincaid took care of me and—"
"Kincaid?" Byrnes arched a pale brow. "Big, angry mech with a rather strong dislike for blue bloods? Would probably prefer to see the Nighthawks burn, rather than helping them? Are we speaking of the same fellow?"
"He's not like that," she said sharply, and Byrnes blinked in surprise. "He's been working with me since the two of you went away, and he's been very protective. He's brave, and gentle when he's alone with me.... He even saved Garrett's life! Without him...." She couldn't say it. Coming so close to losing Garrett was still painful.
"Ava—"
"Prejudice works both ways, Byrnes," she snapped.
There was silence in the hallway.
Ava realized she'd raised her voice, and she never dared to do so around the Nighthawks. "Oh, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be," Ingrid said, and the smile she gave Ava had a knowing edge to it, before she shot her husband an arched brow. "Byrnes needs to mind his own business. Kincaid helped rescue you, my love, and you're a Nighthawk."
Byrnes held both hands up in surrender. "I spoke out of turn, Ava. I'm sorry." But he gave her the queerest sort of look.
"Someone say my name?" Kincaid said loudly, appearing at the top of the stairs.
Oh, no. How long had he been there?
Long enough, clearly, for he gave Byrnes a cool look as he used the bannister to ease down the stairs. "You've both been gone. You missed a great many changes around here. I'm willing to concede blue bloods aren't all that bad. Present company excluded, of course." He coughed under his breath. "Asshole."
"Prick." Byrnes shot him a smile. "I think I've almost missed you."
"There are other changes too." Kincaid's hands settled gently on Ava's shoulders with careful deliberation, squeezing gently. "All good, kitten?"
Ava froze. What was he doing? This was supposed to be.... Everyone would know.
Perhaps that was precisely the point.
She knew he still saw Byrnes as competition for her feelings; he'd practically shouted it at her the other day. And although the matter had been settled in her mind—and heart—she hadn't realized it perhaps wasn't settled in his, despite what she'd told him last night.
You fool. Ava slowly reached up and caressed his hand. "I'm fine, thank you for asking." Then she smiled at him.
A tiny declaration, but she might as well have grown fangs and hissed at the others. Both Byrnes and Ingrid stared at her as if she had.
Then Ingrid stepped forward and kissed Ava on the cheek. "Congratulations."
And Ava panicked a little again, because they were presuming Kincaid had declared his intentions, when the pair of them hadn't quite worked everything out. Kincaid was the one holding back, but if he asked her for... forever... then she'd give it to him.
Her heart squeezed. She'd give him every part of herself if he only opened himself up to the possibility.
Byrnes wasn't quite as sanguine. "Do I need to—"
"No, you do not. I am not an idiot, and although you all treat me like a child, I can make my own decisions." Ava sucked in a slow breath, trying to fight her sudden anger. "I want this... whatever is between us, I want it with every part of my heart."
And God help her, but her mouth had said the words before she could edit them, and now her feelings were on the table, and they were all looking at her, and—
Kincaid squeezed her shoulders again, and stepped around her to take her hand. "We haven't worked out the specifics," he told the pair of them, "but frankly, it's none of your business."
"Or mine apparently," Malloryn said, startling all of them. He looked frustrated as he strode out of the shadows behind the stairs. "I think I'm going to make a company policy of pairing members of the same sex together to avoid this nonsense."
"Because that's working so well for Jack and my brother, Debney." Byrnes snorted. He drifted into the parlor and sank into a chair. "Now I've been told quite firmly to mind my own business, I think we should get to the crux of the matter. I want whoever shot Garrett." He clasped his hands between his knees, looking deadly serious. "And I want his head. I would advise all of you to stay out of my way."
That was... it?
Ava's shoulders relaxed. Everything was out in the open right now, and it felt like they'd all accepted it. It felt like Kincaid had even accepted it.
He brushed his knuckles against her back. "You can breathe now, luv."
"The sniper's yours," Malloryn said, "but after you bring me Ulbricht." He handed Ingrid the folder he carried. "I want the pair of you up-to-date on developments. Ava and Kincaid have discovered a poison that can kill blue bloods...."
Byrnes looked horrified as Malloryn swiftly filled the pair of them in on developments. "Sniper can wait," he finally agreed.
"The thing I don't understand, Your Grace, is the threat against the Nighthawks," Ava said thoughtfully. "Where was the serum? We all thought the SOG were going to fire poisoned darts at them. But they didn't. Just a single sniper to take Garrett down and spur the Nighthawks into a head-on collision with the mob. Why didn't they use the serum? It would have been the perfect opportunity."
"You mean, what are they saving it for?" Kincaid said, cracking his knuckles with his mech hand.
Precisely. Ava clenched both hands around the back of a chair as she stared at all of them. "Edward Leicester said they needed all the crates of serum by last night. So whatever they're planning, it must be soon, and I think there's something else going on here we haven't seen before. I think they plan to use the serum elsewhere."
Malloryn placed his fingers together, looking grim. "You're right." He met all their eyes in turn. "My spy networks turned up nothing. You're the investigators, where do we go from here?"
"Ingrid and I can try and track Ulbricht," Byrnes said, running a hand through his pale hair. The color had faded from it completely now, ever since he'd been turned into a dhampir against his will. "We were on his trail last month and know his hidey-holes, and his scent. My senses are better than ever, we might as well use them."
"And you two?" Malloryn asked, turning to her.
Ava sighed. "We have several leads to chase up. I think the vaccine issue has trailed off, and this is more important anyway. We need to find out who can manufacture dart guns, or guns with hollow bullets that might be filled with Black Vein, much the way the Firebolt bullets are filled with chemicals. And Kincaid has ties among the humanist population." She paused, glancing at him. "Do you think any of your friends would know anything?"
Kincaid nodded slowly. "They might."
Twenty-Seven
AVA AND KINCAID spent another restless afternoon traipsing halfway across London.
Exhaustion rode her hard, but she couldn't give in. Not while Garrett was lying there, trying to recover. Not while her friends—all the Nighthawks she'd ever worked with—were under a cloud of danger.
Ava finally stumped out of the last warehouse they'd been checking. The two main manufacturers on her list had never heard of any strange shipments or requests. Both of them supplied the Nighthawks and the Coldrush Guards who guarded the queen with a standard-issue dart gun, though they used hemlock darts, and not Black Vein. Neither of them knew anything.
"Three thousand vials of serum," she said, wearily rubbing her face. "No dart guns. How are they planning on attacking blue bloods? Individually? With a one-on-one injection?" It made no sense. Ulbricht and his SOG were sons of the Echelon. Pampered fops who thought dueling was the limit of violence. There could only be a hundred or so SOG members at most, hardly enough to take on a force like the Nighthawks. "Think, Ava," she told herself. "How do you kill over four hundred blue bloods in a single hit?"
Kincaid slung his leg over the back of his velococycle. "You'll work it out. I believe in you."
"But what if I'm too late?" she cried. "These a
re my friends, Kincaid. I can't afford to waste time."
"Then we need to talk to my friends. See what they know." He helped her onto the seat behind him. Ava sat sideways, hampered by her skirts today, but she gladly clasped her hands around his waist.
She was almost starting to enjoy riding through the streets behind him. "Are you going to return me to Malloryn's?"
Kincaid started the boiler pack, letting it heat. "No." He let loose a loud sigh. "They're good people, Ava, just misguided. The same way I was. And I think—if we want peace in London—then it's about time both races started getting to know each other a little."
"Do you think they'll like me?" She swallowed nervously.
He laughed. "Not at first. But nobody who ever knew you could dislike you, kitten."
* * *
Xander and Maggie were setting up for the night when Kincaid rapped on the door of the inn, and called out, "Anybody home?"
"Good grief," Maggie called. "Twice in one week. One would almost think you'd remembered who you were, K!"
"Either that or he wants something," Xander added, and then he turned from his seat at the bar. Xander's smile slowly died when he saw Ava hiding in Kincaid's shadow.
He'd never brought a woman home. Nor had he ever introduced one to his friends.
"Ava, luv," he said, gesturing her forward, "this is my friend Xander McGraw, and his lovely wife, Maggie. Xander and Maggie, this is Miss Ava McLaren."
"How do you do?" He could tell Ava was nervous. She was pressing her hair into place, fidgeting.
"The blue blood?" Xander said bluntly.
Kincaid shot him an icy glare, but Maggie gave Xander a nudge with her elbow and smiled warmly. "A pleasure to meet you. I must say, I've been very curious about the woman who finally stole Kincaid's heart."
"Oh, we're just... we're—"
He slid a hand over the small of Ava's back. "We're negotiating where we are in this relationship," he told them, "but we haven't had much of a chance to sit down and discuss it yet."
All three of them blinked at him. Then Xander arched a brow. "No wedding bells then?"
Yet.
Ava choked on something, and Kincaid shot her a look. She looked horrified, but not at the notion, he thought. More the idea of even mentioning it when things between them were so unsettled.
Maggie slapped the back of Xander's head. "Why did I marry you again?"
"What did I do?" Xander protested.
"Maggie, want to see if you can boil a pot of tea for Ava?" Kincaid suggested, gritting his teeth. "We've been running all over London today, and I haven't taken very good care of her."
"Tea?" Maggie looked momentarily stumped, though she was clever enough to realize when he wanted to talk to Xander alone.
"Ava doesn't drink blood," he replied. "She's working on a formula to sustain herself, and she prefers tea."
"That's not technically true," Ava said, meeting his eyes. "I had... a little blood in my tea the other day."
He looked at her sharply.
"Someone once asked me how I could expect him to accept me, when I couldn't even accept myself," she told him a little proudly, and it felt like she kicked him in the ballocks.
He'd driven her to that? He felt a little ill.
"Well, I'm not going to lie to your friends," Ava pointed out, noticing the uneasy looks they gave her. "Or you."
Maggie arched a brow, but nodded. "I can do tea. If you want blood you'll have to go elsewhere."
"Oh, no, I really don't prefer it—" Ava babbled as she scurried after Maggie.
And then he was alone with Xander, still feeling like Ava had pulled the rug from under his feet.
"Bloody hell," Xander said, sitting on a barstool and crossing his arms over his chest. "I honestly don't know what to say."
"All I'm going to do is suggest you treat Ava as you'd expect me to treat Maggie." There was a hint of growl in his voice. She'd defended him against Byrnes this morning, after all.
Which was a hell of a thought.
Xander held his hands up. "I'm not saying I dislike her. She's... not what I imagined, is all. She's your complete opposite in every way." He looked disgusted all of a sudden. "She looks like she'd faint at the sight of blood."
"She's a crime scene investigator for the Nighthawks, and sometimes performs their autopsies. She won't faint, but she'd probably screw her nose up." He drummed his mech fingers on the bar. This wasn't an easy question to ask. Before he started working with COR, he'd not have flinched. These were his people; his friends. But he suddenly felt the distance between them, as though he was no longer that man.
What would he do if Xander knew something about what the humanists were up to and wouldn't tell him?
Or worse, lied to him?
"Spit it out," Xander said. "You've clearly got something on your mind."
"What would you do," he asked Xander, "if you saw Maggie almost dying in front of you, and there wasn't a damned thing you could do about it?"
Xander flinched. "I don't know. Jaysus, K. That's a brutal thought."
"Because I do know what that feels like. A couple of days ago, I watched Ava come so close to dying it was a thin line. And it tore me to pieces. I can't let that happen ever again, do you understand?"
Xander nodded.
Kincaid rested his elbows on the bar, swallowing hard. "I hinted at a weapon that could destroy blue bloods the other night. Someone used it on Ava. And I'm wondering if I can trust you with information that could get the woman I love killed. I need to know you've got my back on this."
There was a long moment of silence. "You're starting to worry me. Why does it feel like you want answers from me I might not want to tell you?"
"Because I do. I need to know what's going on in the humanist circles these days. I know you and Maggie are in the inner circles still. She mentioned the riots, and I warned her to stay out of them."
"What's this got to do with your weapon?"
"Because I think the people who have their hands on the weapon are using humanists to stir a war."
"I might have heard something...." Xander swore under his breath. "But you're asking me to betray my men to the blue bloods, K. Jaysus. I don't know if I can do that."
Since when have we been on opposite sides?
Since the moment Ava smiled at him that night in the Garden of Eden.
"You believed in me when I had a dream," he told Xander, "a dream to escape the enclaves and gain the right for a man or woman to live life freely. And I led you to that freedom. Well, I have another dream now. A London where it doesn't matter if you are man, mech, verwulfen or blue blood. A London where all four races can survive side by side with equal rights, and forge their own futures. Peace, Xander. And not this wary mockery of it, but a true peace.
"And someone wants to take that peace away. There's an Echelon lord who's formed this... this bloody secret society of blue bloods who want the old ways back. They call themselves the SOG, and they're the ones who created this weapon against blue bloods—their own race. They're planning on killing the Nighthawks, or any blue bloods that don't agree with them, in order to drive the remaining blue bloods who aren't quite sure which side of the fence they're on into a war against humans."
Xander paled, shaking his head.
"You're a tool, Xander, that's all you and the rest of the humanists are to them. They're the ones stirring up the riots. They don't care how many humans or Nighthawks die in the streets. And I'm trying to stop it. We're on the same side here."
"Fuck." Xander scraped his hands over his face.
"Can you help me?"
"What do you want to know?" Xander asked hoarsely.
Relief flooded through him—he hadn't been certain if his oldest friend would do this. "Tell me about the humanists, tell me what they're planning, what they're up to, what the latest rallying cries are."
And Xander did, spilling about riots, and people getting together and muttering, and the odd theft. Nothing he ne
eded to hear.
"What are they complaining about the most?"
"It's the blood taxes, K," Xander said. "Those cursed draining factories looming in the East End, churning with blood—our blood—to feed those pasty-faced vultures. That's the bone of contention. Some said we should blow them up, but then the taxes will go up again to refill them, and the Echelon guards them like hawks these days."
"That's not very helpful. How could this weapon—" Kincaid froze. He'd been phrasing it carefully, to keep Xander in the dark about Black Vein, but if he called it what it really was... it all made a horrible sort of sense. Poison. Black Vein was poisonous to blue bloods, and how better to poison the whole bloody lot of them than to contaminate their food source? "Jaysus, that's it. The draining factories." He shoved to his feet. "Ava?"
She and Maggie appeared in a flurry of skirts. Ava looked to him. "What is it?"
"Ulbricht's not looking for dart guns, or pistols. He's going to poison the blood supplies at the draining factories."
Twenty-Eight
"LET'S NOT WASTE any more time," Malloryn commanded, slipping inside his steel-plated armor vest. "We're looking for humanists, or Ulbricht and his SOG, but don't forget the dhampir. They've seemingly gone to ground, but we cannot afford to presume they won't resurface at some point."
They were gathered near the outer edge of the factories, and smoke billowed into the moonlit skies as the factory furnaces burned coal. Ava breathed into her cupped hands. Nerves skittered in her belly. They needed to shut down this attack before it began, but she hoped they wouldn't be clashing with humanists tonight. For Kincaid's sake.
Maggie had given another hint before they left: some of the humanists had been talking about bombing the factories. Hopefully those plans hadn't amounted to much.
And it might be a hunch—Ulbricht wanting to poison the blood supply—but she hoped it paid out. She wanted this done, case or no case. She'd proven to herself what she needed to.