Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  “I know that name.” Darcy stopped just ten yards from the man, close enough that a lucky shot, even from his inaccurate little pocket pistol, might well kill him. “You’re telling me that you’re the physician in charge of Bethlem Royal Hospital?”

  “See! I told you!” Anne exclaimed with a triumph that was but rouged and powdered panic. “He is mad! For God’s sake, Fitzwilliam, get away from here before he becomes agitated!”

  “ ‘Fitzwilliam,’ you say?”

  The Scotsman raised his bushy eyebrows. He held himself with a pinched stiffness Darcy recognized—he was injured somehow—yet he managed to muster a small smile.

  “I have heard of you, too, Sirrr, and I see why your wife was inclined to act with such recklessness. There are now two stricken underrr Lady Catherine’s roof, if I don’t miss my guess … and no one makes betterrr guesses about the strange plague than I. Mrs. Darcy’s efforts will all be for naught, howeverrr. She will be here any minute—I knew she’d be bringing the prize to your dearrr old auntie, and I just managed to slip by her party on the road. When she arrives, you will have her rrreturn to me that which she has stolen.”

  “But—,” Darcy began.

  “No buts, Sirrr. You see …”

  The man used his free hand to pull open his coat. On his left side, just below the ribs, his waistcoat and breeches were soaked with blood.

  “… now I need the cure just as much as you two.”

  “He’s lying,” Anne said. “It’s some kind of trick.”

  “A minute ago, you told me he was mad. Now he’s trying to trick me?”

  Anne simply stared back at Darcy, her lips pressed tightly together. That’s when he knew. This was Sir Angus MacFarquhar, and everything he said was true. Which meant that everything he’d read about Elizabeth was false—lies he’d been meant to find.

  Darcy’s head and shoulders slumped, and suddenly it seemed like a struggle just to keep the sword in his hand.

  “How could I have been so blind?”

  “All right, yes. We’ve kept a few things from you,” Anne said. “But it was for your own good. Sir Angus, tell Mr. Darcy how his wife went about acquiring the cure. How she and her sister set out to seduce you and your son.”

  Sir Angus started to open his mouth, but Anne just kept on talking.

  “She revealed her true self, Fitzwilliam. She is a liar and a schemer and a jezebel. And even if she is bringing the cure here for you, she is unworthy of you.”

  “My wife,” Darcy said, and just those two words brought back some of his strength, “is so thoroughly magnificent, I wonder now if I am worthy of her. As for lying and scheming and seducing, it isn’t Elizabeth you describe. It is you who have revealed your true self … and it is vile.”

  Darcy had often wondered if his cousin hated him for refusing to marry her; now he had his answer. Anne didn’t just look hurt or angry. Her face contorted into a grimace of such deep and bitter malice, he almost expected her to act like the dreadful she half was and throw herself upon him, clawing and biting.

  “I don’t know what kind of grotesque family squabble I’ve wandered into here,” Sir Angus said. “But … oh, thank Christ. Finally!”

  A landau was rolling toward the house. It, like Sir Angus, was splattered with mud and dirt that spoke of a hard, hurried ride down the road to Kent. It seemed unusually crowded, with two men in the driver’s seat and three ladies in the back clustered around a large black box. Two dogs leaned out over one of the doors, their tongues lolling.

  Darcy would have puzzled over the meaning of it all, only the sight of one of the passengers shoved every question from his mind.

  “Elizabeth!”

  She was smiling back at him … until she recognized who stood just beyond him, gun in hand. A minute later, the whole motley band—Elizabeth, her sisters Mary and Kitty, their father, Nezu the ninja, the box and its harness dogs—had left the carriage and was slowly approaching Darcy and Sir Angus and Anne.

  Elizabeth seemed to recognize the sword in Darcy’s hand, and her frown deepened.

  “You are well?” she called to him.

  “Well enough,” Darcy replied with a shrug. “Certainly, I am better now than I have been.”

  Seeing you, he meant. Knowing that you still love me.

  He wanted so desperately to say the words to her. Yet he didn’t know if he’d ever have the chance.

  “That’s farrr enough!” Sir Angus barked. “Any closerrr, and your husband’s condition is going to worsen irreversibly.”

  The Bennets and their friends stopped about forty paces away. Elizabeth was carrying a small wooden box, but no one else held anything. Everyone seemed to be unarmed, though Darcy knew better than to rely on “seemed to.” And so did Sir Angus.

  “You,” he said to Anne. “Go to them.”

  “Me? Why?”

  Sir Angus waved his pepper-box at her. “Go.”

  Anne threw another quick, hateful glance Darcy’s way and then set off.

  “You have the vaccine and the MacFarqwand?” Sir Angus asked Elizabeth.

  She raised the box in her hands. “I do.”

  “Fine. Then you’ll give that to Miss de Bourgh, and she’ll bring it to me. The rest of you will stay rrright where you are. I’ve seen enough of your foreign tricks.”

  “Sir Angus,” Kitty said. “Is Bunny all right?”

  “My son is dead, Miss Whateverrr-Your-Real-Name-Is. Torn apart by dreadfuls along with all the royal family and most of London. As farrr as I know, the only ones to make it out of Westminster alive are me and that accursed rrrabbit.”

  “The royal family? Eaten?” Darcy said. “You can’t mean it.”

  “Oh, aye. I do. I do not know what the future holds for England, Sirrr, but for now I can tell you this: It’s every man for himself.”

  By then Anne had reached Elizabeth, and the two women stared into each other’s eyes. After a long, silent moment, Elizabeth handed over the box.

  “Bring it here now, Miss de Bourgh,” Sir Angus said, “and we can put an end to all this unpleasantness.”

  Anne turned and started toward him.

  “Though I have been wronged, I am not an unreasonable man,” Sir Angus went on as she came closer. “There should be enough of the vaccine in that vial to cure two. Once I’ve taken my dose, you can decide who gets the otherrr … so long as I am free to go. Do you accept those terms, Mr. Darcy? On your honorrr as a gentleman?”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t,” said Anne, and she stopped halfway between Elizabeth and Darcy.

  Sir Angus muttered a word Darcy didn’t think had ever before been uttered on the grounds of Rosings.

  “You want to make sure you get the cure first,” he said more loudly. “Is that it?”

  “What makes you think I want to be ‘cured’ at all?” Anne snarled back.

  She opened the box and drew out a vial of dark liquid.

  “Careful!” Sir Angus cried. “If anything happens to that, none of us will be rrrid of the plague!”

  “Exactly!”

  Anne brought up her hand as if she meant to dash the bottle to the ground.

  “DON’T … YOU … DARE!”

  Anne froze.

  Lady Catherine de Bourgh was riding around the dojo on her huge white stallion.

  “He rejected me, Mother,” Anne said, and Darcy realized he’d never heard her use the word. She made it sound worse than the one Sir Angus had mumbled under his breath a moment before.

  “Again,” Anne continued. “For her. Even after I told him everything.”

  “Then he will answer to me, and we will set all to rights once you’re both cured.”

  Sir Angus cleared his throat and waved his pistol in the air. “Excuse me? Aren’t you forgetting someone here?”

  “Not at all,” Lady Catherine said, and the ninja who’d been slithering up behind Sir Angus popped to his feet, snatched the gun from the man’s hand, and rammed a kunai spike through his
neck.

  Sir Angus had more to say that wasn’t particularly polite, but the words were hard to make out, what with him gasping for breath and choking on blood. As he fell to his knees, his hands pressed uselessly to his scarlet-spurting neck, the rest of Lady Catherine’s ninjas—twenty in all—hopped up behind him.

  “Now,” Her Ladyship said to her daughter, “once we’ve attended to our other guests, we can administer the serum to you and your cousin and set about living happily ever after.”

  Anne narrowed her eyes at her and then turned to Darcy. He let the expression on his face say it all.

  Never.

  “You can all burn in hell!” Anne shrieked.

  She was going to throw the vial this time, there could be no doubt. And if it didn’t shatter upon hitting the ground, she would smash it under her heel.

  She brought up her hand—and screamed as a throwing knife pierced it through the wrist. Both the box and the vial tumbled from her grip.

  They were but inches from the ground when a diving Elizabeth caught them. She rolled forward into a crouch and then opened her curled fingers.

  She looked up at Darcy and smiled.

  The bottle was unbroken.

  “Shinobi!” Lady Catherine roared. “Totsugeki shirou!”

  Ninjas! Attack!

  Darcy couldn’t help but notice that his wife’s smile grew even wider.

  CHAPTER 39

  To Elizabeth’s surprise, when Lady Catherine whipped out a brace of matching flintlocks, she didn’t immediately point them at her.

  “If there is one thing I cannot abide,” Her Ladyship said as her assassins rushed toward Elizabeth’s family and their newfound friends, “it’s ungrateful help.”

  And she took aim at those new friends—Nezu and Mr. Quayle—and pulled the triggers.

  Nezu was a moving target, bouncing and weaving toward his former comrades with a retractable bo staff in his hands. The shot intended for him went wild.

  Mr. Quayle, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as nimble. There was a thunk, and a hole appeared in the side of his little crate.

  “No!” Mary cried. She started to kneel next to the box, but there was no time. The first wave of ninjas was almost upon her, and she was forced to whip out the nunchucks she carried in a back-scabbard and go on the attack.

  Mr. Bennet and Kitty were wading into the battle, too, but Elizabeth couldn’t follow their progress. Lady Catherine had tossed aside her pistols and somersaulted from her saddle, drawing her katana just before landing. She started stalking toward Elizabeth as Anne staggered away, a dagger still stuck through her wrist.

  “Wait for me in the dojo,” Lady Catherine called after her daughter. “I shan’t be long.”

  Elizabeth quickly tucked the vial back in its box with the MacFarqwand (which was also still in one piece, she was relieved to see). Then she stood and reached over her left shoulder. She was wearing a back-scabbard as well, only hers held a sword. She’d assumed—even hoped—this moment would come before the day was through.

  It was time for her final duel with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

  “Wait!” Darcy called out, running to intercept his aunt. “There is no need for—!”

  Her Ladyship caught him by surprise with a sudden, savage side kick that sent her foot deep into his midriff.

  “I am extremely displeased with you,” she said as he stumbled back a step and then collapsed.

  The kick barely set Lady Catherine off her stride, and she carried on swiftly toward Elizabeth.

  The old woman pointed at the box.

  “Give me that, and I will make your death a quick one.”

  “There is something you should know before you try to take it,” Elizabeth said. She slid the box into one of the oversized ammunition flaps on her battle gown and then jerked her head toward Sir Angus. The man was stretched out flat on his face, either dead or moments from it. “He was mistaken. Only one dose of the vaccine remains. You cannot save your daughter and your nephew both. The happy ending you sought is impossible. And always has been, I might add.”

  “Impudent wench,” Her Ladyship growled, and she covered the last twenty feet between them in a leap, her sword pointed at Elizabeth’s face.

  Elizabeth dived aside with not a second to spare. Lady Catherine seemed even quicker than the last time they’d fought—and Elizabeth knew herself to be slower.

  When Her Ladyship spun around and charged her again, she was smiling smugly. She began slicing at Elizabeth with big, arcing swings of the sword even as she talked.

  “You know you cannot defeat me. I can see it in your eyes. I have been campaigning against the dreadfuls these past four years while you have lived the life of a gentleman’s wife.”

  She lunged at Elizabeth.

  “A gentleman’s.”

  She lunged again.

  “Useless.”

  And again.

  “Wife.”

  Each time, Elizabeth only barely blocked the blade stabbing at her. Lady Catherine wasn’t just fast, she was strong.

  And she was right—about Elizabeth’s abilities, at least. Elizabeth wasn’t half the warrior she’d been four years before, and it had taken all her skill to defeat Lady Catherine then.

  Still, Her Ladyship was four years older, and she hadn’t been young to begin with. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

  Elizabeth went on the offensive—but found, after just one thrust, that the old woman had worked her sword under hers and almost ripped it from her hands with an upward jerk. By the time Elizabeth had regained a solid grip, Her Ladyship was whirling up before her in a beautifully executed twist kick that planted a heel against the side of her face.

  Elizabeth stumbled back, blinded by pain.

  “Do you need any help, my dear?” she heard her father call out through the ringing in her ears. “Usually, I’d be the last person to intrude in a private duel, but I’d be happy to make an exception for—ahhhhh! Never mind! I find I am quite unavailable after all!”

  “Lizzy! Look out!” she heard her husband shout, and she instinctively rolled to the right. She wasn’t quite quick enough, however, and Lady Catherine’s blade raked across her left shoulder, barely missing her throat. Before she could get her feet solidly under her again, Her Ladyship’s came flying in, and she took double blows to the side that sent her sprawling.

  Elizabeth hit the ground hard. The breath was knocked out of her, and her sword popped out of her hands. But her first thought was of the vaccine. She put a hand over the box, feeling it through the rough fabric of her gown.

  It hadn’t shattered. She could only pray that its contents hadn’t either.

  By the time she rolled over to look for her sword, Lady Catherine was looming over her, the tip of her katana just inches from Elizabeth’s nose.

  “Don’t do it!” she heard Fitzwilliam call out. “Kill her and you’re killing me!”

  His voice was too far away. Too strained and weak.

  “This is for your own good,” Lady Catherine replied without taking her eyes off Elizabeth. “The good of us all. You corrupted this great family when you introduced something so base and common into it. I shall simply be cutting out the infection.”

  “Noooooooo!” Darcy bellowed as his aunt brought back her sword for the death chop. And then a strange thing happened to his cry. Rather than diminish, it strengthened and multiplied, becoming a whole chorus of howls.

  Dreadful howls.

  A herd of zombies was bursting from the dojo. In the midst of them, to Elizabeth’s astonishment, was Anne de Bourgh.

  Lady Catherine was astonished, too—which was why Elizabeth was able to swing up her feet and send them smashing into the old woman’s knees. There was an extremely satisfying crunch. Her Ladyship wailed in pain and made a clumsy swing with her sword, but Elizabeth was already rolling away backward.

  When Elizabeth sprang upright a second later, she found Lady Catherine hobbling toward her using her katana as a
cane. Behind her, the zombies had reached the first of the wounded, and a few stopped to feast on ninja tartare. The rest swept on toward them—with Anne in the lead.

  “Please don’t think I’m not enjoying our fight to the death,” Elizabeth said, “but I do wonder if we should postpone it.”

  “Pah,” Lady Catherine sneered, and she drew a throwing star from her sleeve and whipped it at Elizabeth’s head.

  Elizabeth dodged it easily.

  Her Ladyship almost lost her balance and fell over.

  Elizabeth began backing away quickly, and nearly every other living person was doing the same. The Bennets, their friends, the ninjas who’d been trying to kill them (and vice versa) just moments before—all were falling back toward the house. Fitzwilliam, too, though it wasn’t the house he was headed toward. It was his wife.

  “Elizabeth,” he said when he reached her side. “I can’t tell you how—”

  “Duck, my love.”

  They both stooped low, and another throwing star went whizzing overhead.

  When they straightened up again, Anne and her unmentionables were but steps from Lady Catherine. Elizabeth expected a handful to fall on Her Ladyship, and she prepared herself for those who would keep charging on.

  She had no more knives or swords. Her last weapons would be her hands and feet. Her self. And that felt somehow right.

  “You come back here this instant!” Lady Catherine said to her. “I am not finished with—”

  Teeth bit deep into the stringy flesh of the lady’s neck. But that wasn’t what put the look of horror on her face. It was looking over to find her own daughter chewing and swallowing.

  “I should have known!” Anne said as the dreadfuls—all of them—fell upon Lady Catherine and began doing as she’d just done. “You taste bitter, Mother! Bitter bitter bitter!”

  Then she threw herself into the churning mass of cadavers fighting for another morsel. There were more than a dozen dreadfuls, and it didn’t take long for the pack to reduce Lady Catherine the Great to bloody scraps.

  It took long enough, though. By the time they were through, Elizabeth and the rest were ready. When Anne started toward them, face as smeared with her mother’s blood as the day she was born, Fitzwilliam brought up the crossbow borrowed from his father-in-law and pulled the trigger. This was a family affair, and it seemed only right that he should end it.