by Bec McMaster
that obliterated his senses with its sudden intensity.
"Hell." Ingrid reared back as if slapped, and
he was reminded that her scent-tracking abilities
were even more sensitive than his. "I cannot smell
a bloody thing."
Another scream pierced his eardrum: Debney
begging someone to stop. Byrnes held the
communicator close against his ear, pacing in each
direction. Unlike Ingrid's jeweled ear cuff, he'd
had to be more surreptitious with the listening
device planted on his half brother. Thank God. If it
hadn't been planted within Debney's collar, they
might have found it, and then Debney would be
dead before either of them knew it.
"— please, please, please... Make it stop!
Make it stop!" Silence filled the sudden void, as
Debney gasped.
" Where's the verwulfen bitch?" Ulbricht
hissed in Byrnes's ear.
" Don't know," Debney cried out. " I swear I
don't know! Last... saw her in the ballroom."
" You're lying."
" I'm not!" Debney squealed.
"What's
happening?"
Ingrid
demanded,
drawing Byrnes back into the here and now with a
faint touch against his sleeve.
"They're trying to get him to give us up."
Byrnes turned. "Where would they have taken him?
They can't be in the manor. Not with all those
guests.... Damn it, I thought he'd be safe in public
view!"
"What about what Ulbricht said about the
grotto?" Ingrid paced to the top of a small hill
overlooking the sprawling gardens as she squinted
into the night. "There! Byrnes! I can see
torchlight!"
She was right. A ring of torches flickered in
the distance.
" Is there anyone else?" someone asked
through the communicator, in the kind of voice that
sent a shiver down his spine.
Byrnes held his breath.
"No." Debney gasped. " Just her. And me."
Debney. You bloody stupid fool. Trying to be
a hero.... Byrnes squeezed his eyes shut, then took
a deep breath. The debt had just turned the other
way. He had to get his half brother out of this. No
matter what the cost was.
"Come on. We'll get closer, see what we're up
against. Between the two of us, we should be able
to handle a few pasty-faced Echelon lords and get
Debney out," Ingrid said, overriding the voice in
his ear. She grasped a section of her skirt and
whirled the fabric away from her body, revealing a
pair of slim-fitting leather leggings beneath the
skirt and a ruffle at the back that was all that
remained of her bustle.
"... got a special treat in mind for Mrs.
Miller," Ulbricht whispered, in his ear. " Thou
shalt not suffer such filth to live. Is that not
correct, Barringale?"
" Indeed," came a sibilant hiss.
Byrnes caught her wrist. "Wait."
Ingrid lifted bronze eyes to his. She'd peeled
off her silk gloves, revealing slim leather gauntlets
that ended with silver spikes that had been pressed
flatly against her fingers but were now extending
into deadly points. One punch with them would
render a man full of holes. "If we don't hurry—"
"I'm aborting this mission," he said forcefully,
"Get out of here. We'll rendezvous at the airfields
in Kew-On-Upton. If I don't arrive by dawn, then
take the dirigible and return to London."
Ingrid's expression told of her confusion.
"What about Debney?"
"I'll bring him out. He's my brother, after all."
She searched his gaze, drawing back against
his hold. "What did you hear? Byrnes?"
"Nothing."
"You promised we'd work together." Her
expression was becoming steely. "And I like
Debney. He's quite a decent fellow. He's—"
"This has nothing to do with me not wanting
to work with you—"
"Oh, really?
Damn it, yes! "They've got something planned
just for you."
There. It was said. Ingrid paused. "I don't like
the idea of placing you in that situation," he
admitted, just as Debney began screaming again.
The sound of it was like ice in his veins, but that
threat.... He knew men like this, men who'd once
tortured verwulfen just because they were
different, or because only a verwulfen could stand
against a blue blood and hope to survive. He'd
even worked one particular case, closing down a
set of fighting pits that forced their verwulfen
slaves onto hot coals for amusement, or chained
them down, allowing blue blood lords to pay for
their bodies for the night. Verwulfen would survive
almost anything, including being cut open or
burned and branded. But just because their bodies
could heal, it didn't always mean that their minds
did. "Ingrid, I won't risk it. They don't know about
me yet, but you—"
" Get it away from me!"
Debney. Again.
Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut, then let out a
slow breath. When her eyelashes fluttered, he saw
the fear evaporating, replaced instead by steely
resolve. "I know what they want to do to me,
Byrnes. It's nothing I haven't experienced before. I
didn't just join this mission for entertainment's
sake, but because I believe in it. These men want
to bring back a culture and time where I was
barely worth spitting at, let alone allowed to live
as a person with my own dreams and desires. They
need to be stopped, and unfortunately there are
only two of us here. Going back for Debney's a
risk that I am willing to take, because he is worth
it. He is trying to make amends."
He didn't want to let her go, but there was no
time to argue, and it was her choice ultimately, not
his. "Fine. We go back together, but if we do this,
then we do it smartly...."
Ingrid's eyes gleamed as he explained how.
NINE
"ARE THE CHAINS secure?"
Ingrid forced herself to hover at the back of
the crowd as someone shouted. Nobody had seen
her yet, but they would. Dozens of masked blue
bloods stood in a central ring near the grotto's
pool, surrounding something that screamed. As the
wind drifted, she screwed up her nose. Something
smelled rank, almost enough to turn her stomach,
and she had barely begun to get her sense of smell
back after the chemical bomb.
"Don't do this," Debney begged. "Ulbricht!"
"I name this man guilty of betraying his social
order," Ulbricht called. "And leading agents of the
Crown against us in order to bring down the Rising
Sons. Raise your hands, my friends! Cast your
votes! Should he live, or should he die?"
Each member of the crowd thrust forth one
fist, thumb out. All of them slowly turned down.
"Death," Ulbricht snarle
d. She could just
make out his face as he whirled on something in the
center.
Ingrid strained to see. Debney, trussed and
tied? What the hell had they done to him?
Her mind struggled to make sense of the
shapes, of the pulley system that was rigged with
chains tied to Debney's wrists and ankles, holding
his body taut off the ground, as each chain pulled at
his limbs—
" Jesus," Byrnes whispered, in her ear. Horror
filled his voice. " Ingrid, get out. Get out now! "
Too late, for the crowd was starting to notice
her now. Ingrid pushed her way through them,
emerging from the shadows of the cave like some
ancient Valkyrie, come for revenge. "Wait!"
Sudden shocked silence greeted her, as almost
three dozen blue bloods turned to face her, covered
by dark robes and blank face masks. The effect
was eerie.
"I deny your vote," she called, standing firm
in the wake of their unspoken censure. "I vote for
him to live!"
The pressure on Debney's chains eased and he
slumped with a whimper, halfway to the ground,
looking around for her, his face a mess of white.
" Run," he mouthed.
And that was when she saw what was
harnessed to the chains. Everything in her ran cold.
Oh shit.
Vampires.
The stink made sense now. The maggot-white
bleached color of their bodies strained in their
harnesses at each of the four points of the device,
threatening to tear Debney apart. Wiry and lean,
with knotted protuberances marching up their
spines, vampires were any sane person's worst
fear. All that remained of a blue blood once they
reached the Fade and color began leeching out of
them, they were consumed by nothing but hunger.
Strong, fast, vicious, and terribly, terribly
bloodthirsty.
Ingrid froze.
She'd never seen one, only ever heard the
stories; of martial law settling on London and
vampires running loose, leaving rivers of blood in
the streets. The Year Of Blood had been over a
century ago, but London never forgot. And the part
of her that was purely primal began to feel the
pulse-thundering tick of prey, sending shivers of
fear through her veins, her muscles trembling as if
prepared to run.
She knew now what could tear apart that
woman in the sewers. But why had it stopped?
Once unleashed, a vampire would just keep killing
and killing....
"You." Ulbricht was the only one without a
mask, and his smile etched pure evil upon his face.
"The filth thinks she has a right to vote!"
Laughter roared back at her.
Be brave. Be brave. Ingrid lifted her chin. "I
hope you have everything in place," she whispered
to Byrnes, swallowing hard.
" Almost," Byrnes promised. " Are you ready?"
No. "Yes."
" The second the Doeppler orbs release, get
out."
"What about Debney?"
He hesitated.
"I'm not leaving him here," Ingrid told him,
glaring at the assembled blue bloods.
"Then get to Debney and try and release
him, but Ingrid... if you can't do it, then you need
to retreat. Promise me that?"
"Promise," she whispered, her heart thudding
like a drum.
"I'll cover your back. Just make sure the
hemlock spikes don't hit him. He's too heavy for
you to carry and still be able to fight. "
Feathers ruffled. The swan stepped forth at
Ulbricht's side as the mysterious woman swept off
her mask.
Cold gray hair glittered beneath the torchlight,
so fine and silvery it looked like spun moonlight.
The gleam of the woman's pale, translucent blue
eyes was shockingly frigid as their eyes met, and
suddenly Ingrid remembered that a single woman
had walked free of the Venetian Gardens
disappearances, a woman with pale hair.
"This trespass demands an answer," the
woman called. "What say you, my friends?"
"Hunt," came a resounding cry.
"Hunt!"
"Hunt! Hunt! Hunt!" they all echoed, the shout
taken up like tribal war drums.
Everywhere she looked, Ingrid was faced
with fists thrusting in the air and vicious, gleeful
smiles. Macabre figures circled her, backlit by the
flickering torches. Right. Ingrid flipped both of her
knives from the wrist gauntlets she wore into her
palms.
"You have no right to vote, filth." Ulbricht
held his hands up, demanding silence.
And it came, almost as eerie as the menacing
shouts had been. The nearest vampire snapped and
strained at its harness, sniffing the air and making
creepy chittering noises in her direction. It had her
scent now, and if blue bloods craved verwulfen
blood above all others, then she had no doubt the
vampire hungered for it too. Those yellowed fangs
were almost an inch long.
" Ready?" Byrnes whispered.
"Ready," she said, and crouched low.
Firecrackers started going off, coughing and
spluttering as they were launched into the crowd.
Small explosions of red and gold light spat as
something whined past her ear. Ingrid shoved
forward, knifing one blue blood in the back and
slashing at another as he wheeled and tried to flee.
An explosion sounded, dangerously close to her,
and left her ears ringing.
Chaos. Beautiful, glorious chaos.
Ulbricht spun, trying to see what was
happening as the torches on the left side of the
grotto fell into darkness, one by one.
" Go," Byrnes said, and more firework balls
began crackling as they were launched into the
crowd of blue bloods, their short fuses hissing.
Ingrid sprang into a run, her bustle flapping
against her thin leather breeches. Lowering her
shoulder, she smashed directly into a blue blood
and with a cry he went up over her shoulder.
Lashing out with one of her knives, she cut
another's throat. He went down as she waded on,
but she doubted the blow would kill him. Blue
bloods could heal almost anything; only a knife to
the heart or decapitation could kill them. Or fire.
Byrnes had been busy, having retrieved the
special traveller's bag he'd stashed in their rooms.
Whilst she and Debney distracted the Rising Sons,
he'd been laying powder trails and planting the
Doeppler orbs he'd brought with him. The orbs
worked on a timer, releasing a mixture of gases
that sent the blue bloods coughing and spluttering,
thanks to Ava. Fire raced along the powder trails,
igniting the tails of one blue blood’s coat, and
sending panic through the mob. The last weapon he
had on hand was the most dangerous; exploding
devices that contained almost a hundred hemlock-
studded iron spikes in each ball. Hemlock would
momentarily paralyze the blue bloods, although it
would barely affect her.
Debney. There! Ingrid felt the wild surge of
her blood suddenly heat as the violence and
mayhem appealed to her predator nature. Faces
began to blur away, becoming mindless shadows
that she cut and slashed, and then suddenly she was
through the ring of blue bloods into the marble
circle cut in the center of the grotto, where Debney
strained in his chains.
The swan was between them, one hand on a
pulley system, as if she'd been waiting. "All yours,
my dear," the woman said, yanking the lever down.
One of Debney's chains sprang free. He
yelped, and rolled as he hit the marble, the chains
easing. The woman turned and pulled another
lever, and steel bit through the chain on his left
wrist, snapping it clean off.
Ingrid paused. "Why are you helping us?"
"Oh, I'm not." Another yank, another chain.
Only one remained, this time on his left foot. The
woman stepped away, crossing toward the
vampire. "I promised Ulbricht a hunt, and a hunt he
shall get." Withdrawing a slip of brightly colored
silk from the bodice of her dress, the woman
reached out as if the creature couldn't simply take
her hand off, and petted it, waving the silk in front
of its face.
Red silk. Her drawers. "You bitch!" She'd
been in Ingrid's room, in her things.
Bunching the silk, the woman rubbed it
against the vampire's nose. "Easy, easy now, my
pet. You'll get a taste," she crooned, smiling at
Ingrid as she began to tug on the straps holding the
vampire in place. "Soon."
That cut through the rising surge of
berserkergang that was threatening to overwhelm
her. Suddenly Ingrid knew exactly what the woman
planned.
"Byrnes!" she snapped, turning and rushing to
the final lever.
" Rather busy," he panted.
"She's releasing one of the vampires." Ingrid
threw all of her weight into the enormous lever,
and it barely budged. What? She stood back. The
woman had yanked it as easily as if it weighed a
mere ounce. "It has my scent."
" I'm doubling back then! Get moving!"
"It's a vampire, Byrnes." A chill ran through
her. Nothing could escape a vampire. Very few
things could kill one. During the Year Of Blood, it
had taken over a thousand militia and half the
Echelon to find their nest and destroy them.
Numerous buildings had been gutted by fire, and
hundreds of civilians were torn apart by the