Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City

by M. J. Scott

  As Holly pulled the iron door shut behind us, the wooden door opened and a vampire stepped through, his posture wary, tensed, head swiveling slowly from side to side as though he was scanning the room.

  Which he couldn’t do. Where his eyes should have been was a mass of scarred flesh and ruin. Burns. I knew the look of burns—they were somewhat of an occupational hazard for metalmages—and these were definitely burn scars. Horrifying, scorching burns.

  The room swam around me for a moment. Blighted earth. I swallowed and took a deep breath.

  “This is Atherton Carstairs,” Simon said, moving to the vampire’s side. “Atherton, do you know who is here?”

  “Hello, Lily,” Atherton said. “Lady Bryony. Guy. Miss Holly. I do not know the other three. But I gather we have a new patient?” He turned to face Guy, the surety of the movement uncanny. The Blood have senses far beyond those of humans—their hearing and smell and sight are all honed to the acuteness of the predator—but seeing Atherton’s casual display of just how good they were was alarming.

  “The patient is Holly’s friend, Regina,” Simon said.

  “The one who was missing?” Atherton’s mouth turned down. “I am sorry, Holly.” The vampire turned back to Simon. “How did you retrieve her?”

  “Lily and Fen—you’ve heard Holly talk about Fen—went after her. They were able to get her out of the warrens.”

  “Can we do the niceties later?” Guy asked, shifting his stance carefully. “Where do you want Reggie?”

  “Bring her inside. There’s a bed readied.” Atherton turned and opened the door he’d come through, then walked into the room beyond. Guy carried Reggie through and the rest of us followed.

  I was first through the door after Simon and almost stopped short again when I found myself in a much larger room that resembled a hospital ward.

  That’s because it is a hospital ward, idiot, I chided myself. Simon had said that he’d taken Atherton to an old disused ward. What he’d neglected to mention was that it was no longer disused.

  No, now it was full. There were at least eight rows of beds, each occupied by a sleeping person. Guy put Reggie down on the empty bed Atherton indicated, settling her gently. Atherton bent and pulled the covers around her. I saw Guy stiffen as the vampire reached to move one of Reggie’s arms, but he didn’t interfere.

  “Are they all blood-locked?” Fen’s voice came sharply from behind me.

  “Yes,” Bryony said calmly. “More or less.”

  “What does that mean?” Fen asked. His voice rang loud in the hushed room. None of the patients stirred, though, which meant either that their sleep was charmed or that they weren’t capable of responding.

  “We’re getting closer to a cure,” Simon said. “But—” He stopped, turned to Lily with a raised eyebrow.

  Lily shrugged. “I said you should tell them. That means telling all of it.”

  “All right.” Simon rubbed his thigh again, then gestured at the various chairs that stood beside some of the beds. “Sit. Let me go back to the beginning. Bryony, will you see to Reggie?”

  Bryony nodded and went to help Atherton. The rest of us carried chairs closer to Simon and then settled ourselves.

  Simon looked tired as he began to speak. “All right. The beginning. Fen, you know a little of this, I think, from Holly.”

  Fen, on his chair, was tense, his brows drawn together in a thick black slash over his eyes. “Perhaps. Do you mean Saskia doesn’t?”

  “No.”

  Oh good, more secrets. I held my tongue.

  Simon drew in a breath, let it out heavily. “A few months ago, Lucius sent Lily to try and kill me.”

  “What?” I’d never known exactly how Simon and Lily had crossed paths, what had driven her defection from the Night World, apart from falling madly in love with my brother. I turned to face Lily. “You did what?” Around my neck, I felt my chain begin to heat.

  “Easy, Sass,” Simon said. “You don’t understand.”

  “She tried to kill you!” I said indignantly.

  Lily’s eyes lit with amusement for a moment before her expression returned to its neutral gaze.

  “Well, she failed,” Simon pointed out. “Besides, she didn’t want to do it. Lucius—” He stopped, looked again at Lily. She nodded. “Lucius had a secret. Lily’s secret. He’d addicted her to his blood.”

  “You were locked?” Fen said, looking shocked.

  Lily shook her head. “Not exactly. I’m a wraith. Vampire blood doesn’t work in the same way for my kind, apparently. I had the need, but it didn’t damage me like it does a human. I kept my senses and I could control my hunger, to a degree.”

  “That may be debatable,” Guy said with a snort. “After all, you fell for Simon.”

  “True.” She looked at Simon affectionately. “It’s that DuCaine charm, I guess.”

  “Simon cured your addiction?” I asked.

  “No. Lucius’ death cured my addiction.”

  “And they killed Lucius,” Fen added.

  I gaped at him. “I don’t understand.”

  Fen shrugged, his chain clinking softly. “Your brother and Lily. They’re the ones who killed Lucius.”

  Sainted earth. I dug my fingers into the back of my neck, the pounding in my head stronger than ever. My chain warmed again. Too many secrets. All this time and they’d never told me. “You killed him so you’d be cured?” I asked Lily.

  “Because he needed killing,” Lily said. “He was a danger to everyone.”

  “But it cured you. Killing the vampire who addicted you cured you?”

  “It did. In my case.”

  “What about others?” I turned to Simon. “Have you tried this on others?”

  Simon rolled his shoulders. “We can’t just go around slaughtering vampires to test out the theory.”

  “More’s the pity,” Guy said with a grumble.

  “The problem is that by the time we get our hands on anyone who’s blood-locked, they’re too far gone to tell us who locked them anyway.”

  “But you have tried?” I prompted.

  “Yes,” Simon admitted.

  “On who?” Fen said suddenly.

  “Patients brought to St. Giles,” Simon said.

  Fen’s brows lifted. “Then how has this been kept a secret? If people’s families bring them here for treatment . . .”

  Simon looked away. My stomach curled uneasily, the pain in my temples intensifying. “Simon?”

  He took a deep breath, sighed it out. “The families don’t know.”

  “What?” Fen and I spoke in unison.

  “They don’t know,” Simon repeated.

  “So what do they think has happened to these people?”

  “They think they’re dead,” Lily said.

  Fen made a half-choked sound of outrage. “That’s horrible!”

  Lily shrugged. “The locked were already lost to their families. Offering false hope would be crueler. So Simon chose not to.”

  “Is it false, though?” I asked.

  Fen ignored me, still focused on Lily and Simon, his green eyes very dark, body tensed. “What gives you the right to make that decision? Those people brought their daughters and sons and parents to you and you . . . what, lied to them? Told them they died? How can you do that?”

  “I admit, I struggled with it,” Simon said. “But Lily is right. It didn’t seem fair to offer false hope, to prolong their pain. Bryony and I agreed this was kinder.”

  “Either that or you just didn’t want anyone to find out about what you were doing. Because you knew people would try to stop you,” Fen said, his voice dangerously close to a growl again.

  “That was obviously a factor.”

  “Is it even legal?” Fen asked. “If the Blood have a right to the locked under treaty law, is it even legal to try and take that away from them?”

  “Everything under the treaty is negotiable, Fen,” Holly said.

  “Which is part of why it’s a flawed sys
tem,” he replied.

  “You don’t believe in the treaty?” Guy asked.

  “I don’t . . .” Fen stopped, shrugged. “I think it leaves a lot of people to fall between the cracks.” He looked at Simon again.

  “Then why join our delegation?”

  “Sometimes you have to pick from several bad choices,” Fen said.

  I winced as Guy’s expression darkened. “I’m sure Fen means—”

  “Let him speak for himself,” Guy said. Beside him, Holly put a hand on his arm and he shook her off. Definitely not good.

  “Do you really care?” Fen said. “You got what you wanted.”

  Guy leaned forward. “Did we?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “That we don’t need someone whose loyalty is questionable.”

  “I gave you my word.” Fen’s jaw clenched. I held my breath, not daring to speak as Guy and Fen locked gazes.

  “But you don’t believe in the treaty.”

  “I said it was flawed.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Not necessarily. Not the way I see it.”

  “You and I have different ways of looking at things, then,” Guy said.

  “Yes, I suppose we do,” Fen said. “You grew up in safety and comfort. Your family are the kind who build places like this hospital.” He waved his arm at the room. “I grew up in an attic above a whorehouse. You can afford to be black and white about the world, Templar. I can’t.”

  “Is that so?” Guy’s voice was starting to stretch to a drawl. Never a good sign.

  Simon held up a hand. “Calm down. It’s late and we’re all tired. Why don’t we—”

  “No, Simon. I want to hear what he has to say,” Guy said.

  “And I want to hear Simon answer my question,” Fen said. “Is it even legal, what he’s doing?”

  “That’s a gray area,” Simon said carefully.

  “Gray as in ‘nobody knows’ or gray as in ‘we’re all in it up to our necks’?” Fen said.

  “We don’t know,” Lily said.

  “Is this why Lucius tried to kill Simon?” Fen said.

  “He never gave me a reason,” Lily said. “But I would assume so.”

  “Which means we can also assume that maybe some of the Blood know about what you’re doing. And that they really don’t want this to happen.”

  “I don’t think any of us particularly care if Ignatius Grey and his cronies are unhappy,” Lily said.

  “Only those of us who have to live with the consequences of that unhappiness. What if they use this at the negotiations? Surely Lucius didn’t keep it to himself.”

  “I had heard no whispers of it in the court,” Lily said. “But we think it’s wise to plan for that.”

  “And if they do, what if the Fae side with them? It could be a disaster,” Fen said.

  “Or our salvation,” Lily countered.

  “If there is a cure, maybe. Is there? You said there were others. Were they cured when Lucius died?”

  “It’s complicated,” Simon said slowly.

  “Why? Seems like a yes or no answer to me.”

  “That sounds very black and white,” Guy said to Fen.

  “You don’t like this either,” Fen shot back.

  “True, but that hasn’t convinced Simon to stop, as yet.” My brothers exchanged a scorching look. My stomach churned. No. I couldn’t handle this if my brothers were fighting as well. I didn’t want our family to splinter.

  “And now you want to experiment on Reggie?” Fen said. “Make her part of this—”

  “Fen.” Holly’s voice cracked across the room. “This is Reggie’s best chance.”

  “How is it even a chance? Better that she died than stay like this.”

  “Simon will find a cure,” Holly said stubbornly. “He will.”

  Fen scowled. “I like Guy’s idea better. I vote for going back to the warrens and chopping off heads until we find the bastard responsible for this. Better yet, we can set fire to the whole fucking place. Let them burn.”

  “Killing all the Trusted and the Nightseekers and the Blood who do not feel as Lucius and Ignatius do in the process?” Lily snapped. “Oh yes, excellent plan. Of course, you’d probably die before you got too close. Do you want to do that to Holly?”

  “Not to mention that an attack on the warrens would blow the treaty negotiations all to hell,” Guy said. “But maybe you don’t care about that.”

  Fen’s eyes flared brilliant green, then darkened again. His mouth twisted. “I—”

  “If you won’t help, then you can leave,” Holly said coolly. Her eyes were very large in her face as she looked at Fen and I got the feeling she was only stopping her voice from trembling with a fierce effort of will. “Simon’s right. It’s late and it’s been a difficult night. You should go home, Fen. Go home and think about what you want to do. Think about whose side you’re on exactly. Think about what Reggie and I mean to you.”

  Fen flinched. Ever so slightly, but I saw it. I was watching him far too intently to miss even the smallest move he made.

  Then he spun around and stalked to the door, pulling it shut behind him with a thump that reverberated through the room like the final toll of a funeral bell.

  Chapter Eleven

  SASKIA

  The echo of the door’s slamming seemed to take a long time to fade away. I stayed where I was, looking at the beds around me—and the people in them—trying to understand what Simon had just revealed. That he had secretly been working on a cure for blood-locking, working with one of the Blood. For years.

  “Well?” Simon said. “Anybody else have anything to say on the subject?”

  “You already know what I think,” Guy said. His voice was grim. I glanced at him, took in the set of his jaw and the way his scarred eyebrow was drawn down. Guy disapproved. Though obviously he had decided to side with Simon at the moment. Would he continue to do so?

  “Saskia?” Simon said.

  I looked back to where Reggie lay. Holly had taken a seat beside her and Bryony and Atherton stood on the other side of the bed. The vampire’s ruined face was tilted down toward Reggie, his hand on her wrist, his manner so like Simon’s when he was with a patient that it stole my breath for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. A cure . . . it was something straight out of the pages of the cheap novels Hannah devoured. The stuff of legends, not reality. Even if it could be true, it had come too late to save the one person our family had needed to save. And it might yet have a terrible cost. “I need . . . time.”

  “You have until the negotiations start,” Simon said. “You need to make up your mind.”

  “Are you going to announce this during the negotiations? Does it even work?”

  Simon and Lily exchanged a long look. “It’s hopeful,” Simon said eventually. “We’re moving in the right direction. We know it has something to do with bloodlines amongst the Blood.”

  “When Lucius died, did it help any of the others? Or just Lily?”

  “Some of the others responded. They awoke. We’re helping them, but they are mostly . . . damaged. We’ve been trying to determine when the best time is to tell their families.”

  That was a conversation I was glad that I wouldn’t have to be involved in. I could see Simon’s reasoning for keeping what he was doing down here a secret, but the families who thought they’d lost someone . . . what would I feel if I found out that Edwina had been hidden away from me for years and years whilst someone tried to cure her?

  Happy if they’d been successful. But also deeply angry about all the time stolen from me. And all the needless grief.

  “There must be magic involved as well,” I said. “When the Blood turn, they change physically. There’s magic involved in that process, yes?”

  Simon nodded. “As far as we understand it.”

  Thinking about it made me dizzy. I understood a little about blood—metalmages can sense the iron in it, after all, an
d those of us attuned to iron more keenly than others—but I knew very little about how a human is turned to a vampire. I doubted anyone outside the Blood themselves knew much about that.

  “Vampire blood must be different somehow, or else it wouldn’t be addictive in the first place.”

  “Exactly. We’re trying to understand how it’s different and how it changes the locked. And if it can be reversed.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “And until you do, the only sure way you know is to kill the vampire who locked them.” Blighted earth. It was a mess. Like reaching for something precious only to have it continually dangled out of reach.

  “Not just the vampire who locked them,” Lily said. “You have to kill the oldest vampire in that bloodline. At least, we think so. That why killing Lucius worked. He was the oldest left in his bloodline.”

  “His death changed the magic? Or ended it?”

  Lily looked thoughtful. “Changed, maybe. It can’t have ended it or the vampires he’d sired would have died too, surely?”

  I just wanted to go home, go to bed, forget for a few hours. Maybe Master Aquinas and my brothers were right. I should stay safely tucked up behind the Guild walls and let the troubles of the world be someone else’s problem.

  Of course, if I could have chosen that path, I wouldn’t be standing here in the first place.

  “The Blood will go crazy. If you tell them you can cure blood-locking by killing vampires . . . it will be war.”

  Simon looked almost as tired as I felt, his blue eyes shadowed. “Hopefully we won’t have to tell them. Hopefully we can find the true cure. Something that won’t require bloodshed. Anyway, if things go smoothly, if the Blood don’t overreach during the negotiations, then maybe we can keep this to ourselves a while longer.”

  I doubted that he believed the negotiations were going to go smoothly any more than I did. I was tired of being lied to. “Who else knows?”

  “Just the people in this room.”

  “And probably some Blood,” I said. “Fen was right. If Lucius tried to kill you, he couldn’t have kept his reasons entirely secret. Someone amongst the Blood knows.”