Mission_Improper

by Bec McMaster

  they were going to beat the sun home, so he opened

  the door and... nothing. Apparently."

  "An earl." That was going to be bothersome.

  The aristocratic Echelon might no longer be in

  charge of the city, but they could make things

  difficult if they wished to. "No wonder the London

  Standard is haunting us."

  "I thought it might have been your pretty eyes

  they were captivated with," Ingrid said, appearing

  at his side with little fanfare. "Are we going in or

  not?"

  Copeland's eyes widened as he took her in,

  bearing

  all

  the

  hallmarks

  of

  masculine

  appreciation. "Ma'am. Unfortunately we've got

  orders to—"

  "Keep the scene's integrity preserved," Ingrid

  finished, practically batting her eyelashes at the

  man. "Until Malloryn's unit gets here."

  "Ah, yes, ma'am." Copeland's stance softened,

  a smile flickering over his mouth.

  Byrnes bared his teeth. It might have passed

  for a smile. He hoped. "Well, I think we're the elite

  unit you're waiting for." Tugging a sealed letter

  from his waistcoat pocket, he shoved it in

  Copeland's face before the bloody idiot could fall

  at Ingrid's feet in worship.

  "What have you gotten yourself into, Byrnes?"

  Brasham asked, taking the letter off a flummoxed

  Copeland and examining it.

  He smiled. "Trouble, hopefully."

  "Only you would say such a thing." Brasham

  shook his head. "Through you go."

  Grabbing Ingrid’s hand, Byrnes tucked it in

  the crook of his arm and escorted her through. Ava

  and Charlie followed, Ava lugging her precious

  carpetbag along with her.

  "Keep your mind on the job," he told Ingrid as

  the gates shut behind them. "Copeland doesn't

  deserve your games."

  That earned him an arched brow. "Who said

  they were games? He has pretty eyes. And you're

  the one that insisted that I play your partner. If you

  cannot handle it, Byrnes, then do be a dear and

  speak up."

  He was going to throttle her. Slowly. Or

  maybe kiss her. He hadn't quite decided.

  "This way." Ingrid swept under his arm and

  headed across the grass, shooting him a knowing

  glance as she went. "Some of us want to see the

  scene of the crime."

  The Venetian Gardens had been crafted for

  pleasure. Both upper and lower classes could buy

  their ticket in, and there were often fireworks,

  acrobatic shows, and pavilions where parties

  could be hosted. Broad canals crisscrossed the

  sprawling gardens and white lacquered gondolas

  sat in a row at the boarding docks, bobbing up and

  down in the breeze as they waited for night to fall

  and passengers to come.

  "Which way is the Grand Pavilion?" Byrnes

  asked.

  "You've never been to the Venetian Gardens?"

  Charlie Todd seemed surprised.

  "Not really my sort of affair," Byrnes replied.

  "He's more interested in gambling dens than

  in garden parties," Ava added, with a tsk of

  disapproval under her breath.

  "Oh, but this place is so much more than that.

  This way," Charlie called, heading toward a huge

  pavilion that was circled by Georgian pillars. It

  dominated the grassy space, and french doors

  opened on all sides to reveal the room within.

  "Anyone approaching the pavilion should

  have been seen," Byrnes noted.

  "It was dark," Charlie replied, raking the

  roofline. He pointed. "If I were going to enter

  unseen, I'd use those trees for cover, then climb

  them to get to the roof."

  "That doesn’t negate the fact that the grass

  surrounding it provides inadequate coverage,"

  Byrnes shot back. Bad enough working with Ingrid,

  let alone all three of them.

  "Let me look inside," Charlie replied.

  "There's got to be a way that someone got in and

  out—with all the guests—without being seen by

  the staff."

  "If Carrington was an earl, then there's high

  chance he was a blue blood," Byrnes said, looking

  around. Not every single member of the Echelon

  had been infected with the craving virus that had

  once been considered an elite privilege, but most

  of the upper nobility were. Or the males, at least.

  Females were considered too prone to hysteria and

  overruling passions to be able to control

  themselves should they suffer from the bloodlust.

  Accidents happened, of course, and there were

  both rogue blue bloods like himself, whose

  existence hadn't been sanctioned, and a handful of

  female blue bloods.

  "He was a blue blood," Ava said, flipping

  through her notes. "It was in the earlier report at

  Malloryn's."

  A man fidgeted by the entrance to the

  pavilion, his stained fingers holding a half-smoked

  cigarette, though his glazed eyes stared at nothing.

  Byrnes held out his hand. "Caleb Byrnes,

  Nighthawk."

  "Silas Compton," the fellow greeted, "I'm the

  manager of the Venetian Gardens."

  "We'll leave you to it," Ingrid murmured,

  taking Charlie and Ava inside with her.

  Byrnes watched them go. "You're the one who

  found the earl and his guests missing?"

  "Aye." Compton ground his cigarette out

  among the stubby corpses of several other half-

  finished blunts. Though his clothes were distinctly

  upper class, his hair was rumpled and signs of

  disorder streaked through, with his crooked tie and

  an inch of shirt that hung loose at his waist.

  Clearly bothered by the ordeal.

  Byrnes flipped open his notebook, filing that

  away for future notice. "Do we know how many

  guests were in attendance?"

  "Got the register from the gates," Compton

  announced. "Thirty-two of them remained at this

  late hour, sir. Including the Earl. Plus there were

  eight attendants from the Venetian Gardens, taking

  away the food platters and the glasses."

  "So forty people are missing altogether?"

  Byrnes glanced up from the notes he was writing.

  "Sounds like a small private party for an earl."

  "Birthday party, by all accounts. Carrington's

  pockets are shallow, according to gossip."

  Compton shrugged. "Been hit hard by the

  Revolution and the new laws."

  "I would have thought the Pavilion to be

  expensive to hire."

  "It is. Not as bad as some, but appearances

  have to be kept, sir."

  "So Carrington was trying to balance the party

  between affordable, but stylish enough to pretend

  he didn’t care about that sort of thing. Minimal

  guests, not a lot of food and drinks, that sort of

  thing?"

  "Aye."

  Byrnes looked around. "You saw nothing?"

  "Nothing out of the ordinary," Compton

 
replied. "And I've been racking my brain, sir. The

  doors were open and guests trickled out to watch

  the fireworks, then they went back inside. By the

  time I came around to alert everyone to dawn's

  imminent arrival, the doors were locked and

  nobody was there. Nothing but... a trace amount of

  blood, though that could have been from their own

  private flasks. The only person I saw leave was a

  beautiful woman who exited the party ten minutes

  before I came. I only noticed her because I was

  overseeing the arrival of crates of blud-wein at the

  time."

  "Can you describe her?"

  "Dressed in white, I think. Pale hair. Blonde,

  perhaps? I didn't take much notice, sorry sir. We

  were running short of blud-wein, so I was

  attempting to sort out that mess."

  "And you didn't hear anything?" Byrnes

  paused with his pen pressed against his notebook.

  "Nothing, but then that might have been the

  fireworks. There was also another party over the

  eastern side, and the gondolas were busy with

  other guests."

  Byrnes assessed his notes. "If you think of

  anything else, let me know," he said, handing the

  fellow his card.

  Then he was free to enter the pavilion.

  The room was eerily silent. A table by the

  wall held a row of champagne glasses stacked in a

  pyramid, and champagne lay flatly in the glasses.

  Ice buckets still held half-drunk bottles of blud-

  wein, judging by the coppery scent of it. There'd

  been an automaton orchestra in the corner, but

  they'd long since wound down, the automata caught

  in frozen tableaux over their instruments. Their

  glass eyes made him shudder. They alone might

  have been witness to whatever had happened in

  here, but nobody would ever know what they'd

  seen.

  "Over here, Byrnes," Ava called.

  The three of them were gathered in the

  northern corner. Someone had painted a bloody

  “0” on the gauzy curtains that surrounded the room.

  There were several blood spatters on the marble

  floors, but no other signs of a skirmish.

  "Do you think that's some kind of symbol of

  ownership?" Ingrid asked, staring at it.

  "Possibly." Every now and then he and the

  Nighthawks worked a case that was clearly

  committed by the same person. They all tended to

  have their signature tricks. Byrnes frowned,

  running his finger through the blood and then

  rubbing his fingers together. "It's tacky in some

  areas, but mostly dry."

  "Not fresh then," Charlie said, his nostrils

  flaring and his eyes darkening to a bottomless

  black before he turned away from the curtains and

  forced the hunger back down.

  The hunger had never overruled him before,

  but Byrnes knew that other blue bloods sometimes

  struggled with its grip. "Is it going to be a

  problem?" he asked quietly, and Charlie shot him a

  sideways look before shaking it off.

  "No time for dinner this morning," he

  muttered, his hand delving inside his pocket for a

  flask of blood. "That's all."

  "So we have forty people who are missing,"

  Byrnes commented, looking around. "And an empty

  room, with minimum signs of a struggle. How did

  forty people just vanish? That's what we need to

  know."

  "Through

  the

  roof?"

  Ingrid

  suggested

  dubiously.

  "People would have seen them leaving," he

  pointed out, then looked around.

  "Underground. It had to be through a tunnel.

  Perhaps there's an entrance to Undertown here,"

  Charlie suggested.

  "Perhaps." Byrnes shoved a table out of the

  way. Nothing beneath it. "Undertown was formed

  where the Eastern link of the Underground project

  collapsed. That's a long way from here."

  Charlie grinned at him. "You think like a

  Nighthawk, Byrnes. I'm a thief from Whitechapel.

  There's not a section of London that's inaccessible

  from

  below.

  There

  are

  tunnels,

  sewers,

  underground rivers, old plague pits... It's an entire

  world down there."

  "How do you think we ran the revolution?"

  Ingrid snorted, shoving aside a rug.

  And he was forced to remember that she'd

  once been a humanist, one of the founding members

  of the revolution that tore the prince consort from

  his throne.

  "I'll leave you to it," Ava said, scraping some

  sort of residue into a small glass vial that she had

  tugged from her carpetbag. "My place is not

  scampering through tunnels. I'll try and work out

  what this smoky residue is. It's dirtied the floor in

  areas."

  The three of them crawled across the room,

  shoving chairs and tables out of the way and

  peeling back rugs. Byrnes used his knife to feel

  around the edges of the large floor tiles, keeping an

  eye on the other two.

  "Got anything?" Byrnes called, watching as

  the lad paced a rug on the floors, sniffing at the air.

  Charlie flipped the rug out of the way, his

  face lighting up. "This tile is loose! I can smell

  blood."

  Byrnes crossed to his side and used his knife

  to feel the edges of the tile. It wiggled upwards.

  Clearly loose. "It's moving!"

  Charlie slipped his fingers under the edge of

  the tile as Byrnes pried it clear of the floor, and

  together they eased it aside. Beneath it was a grate.

  Hauling the grate out of the stone, Charlie set

  it aside with a ringing sound, wincing. "It's heavy."

  "Which means our perpetrator is either

  supernaturally strong, or they used a mechanical

  contraption to shift it," Ingrid said.

  "And someone stayed behind to ease the rug

  over the grate again." Byrnes considered what

  Compton had told him. "Actually, Compton said a

  beautiful woman left the party nearly ten minutes

  before he discovered the missing persons. She

  might have replaced the rug. I'll check the guest list

  to see how many women were on it."

  Charlie knelt beside the grate, peering into the

  darkness. "The scent of blood's clearer here."

  Fine. "Ladies first." Byrnes gestured.

  Ingrid lowered herself through the manhole

  and vanished with a splash. One of the things he

  admired most about her was her willingness to do

  what needed to be done in the pursuit of a killer.

  She hadn't even flinched at the scent wafting up out

  of the tunnel, and her knee-high boots and leather

  breeches meant she was dressed for the occasion.

  "Youth before age," Charlie said with a wink,

  and disappeared after her.

  "You all right here, Ava?" Byrnes called.

  "Fine." She waved a hand, absorbed in some

  kind of chemical test she was performing.

>   Byrnes stepped through the open grate and

  landed in a splash of water. The predator inside

  him reared its head, his vision cutting through a

  dozen colors, and ending up in shades of black and

  gray as it intensified.

  Some blue bloods had trouble dealing with

  the other side of the craving virus: the darkness,

  the hunger. Instead of trying to control his darker

  side, Byrnes had learned to use it to hunt, and thus

  assuage the urge to kill. If he glutted his predator

  half on the thrill of the chase, then most of the time

  it left him alone.

  Just one problem now: he wasn't focusing on

  blood, or the scent of whoever had done this... No,

  all he could smell were lilies, and the heated musk

  of Ingrid's skin. His gaze locked on her, as though

  she were the prey.

  Focus. Byrnes curled his fingers into fists and

  closed his eyes, forcing himself to hone in on the

  droplets of blood in the water. It was more

  difficult than he'd expected.

  "I can smell several different perfumes,"

  Ingrid announced, splashing forward through the

  gloom. She tripped on something and caught

  herself. "Appears to be some sort of... tracks...

  underneath. Rail tracks?"

  "Not wide enough," Charlie replied, peering

  through the murky water. Enough light gleamed

  through grates set at varying intervals along the

  tunnel for them to be able to see. "Perhaps closer

  to what you get in a mine, or in Undertown, when

  you're using wheeled carriages to carry heavy

  objects."

  "Whatever it is, it's under ten inches of

  water," Byrnes pointed out. "So it hasn't been used

  for a long time."

  "Can you smell that?" Charlie asked, his

  nostrils wrinkling up, as they splashed along.

  "All I'm getting is that perfume." Byrnes knew

  he was a good hunter, but the rookery lad just

  might own better senses than he did.

  "Smells sweet," Ingrid murmured, her amber

  eyes a beacon in the dark.

  “And kind of rancid,” Charlie muttered.

  They moved silently through the tunnels, just

  in case whoever had done this was still here.

  "The scent of blood's getting stronger."

  Byrnes waded ahead, one hand on his knife, as he

  tracked the scent. “It’s— Oh.”

  A woman floated facedown in the shallow

  pool of water. Above her, the grate allowed weak

  sunlight through it, highlighting the edges of her

  rose-colored silk gown. A gown that was stained

  and bloody.

  Byrnes slowly rolled her over. Her abdomen

  was torn apart, like a feral dog had been at it, and