You Only Love Twice (London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy Book 3)

by Bec McMaster

  "I didn't do a damned thing. He kidnapped me."

  She pressed the charge button on the illuminator. It began to whine. The dhampir stalked her through the fog, and Gemma forced herself to tilt her head to listen. If she mistimed this she was dead.

  "This isn't personal, Miss Townsend."

  There. To her right.

  "Though I might be inclined to make it such." His voice roughened, but it was now to her left. Toying with her. "You're going to get him killed."

  "I can sway the Duke of Malloryn. He won't harm Obsidian."

  "I weren't talkin' about Malloryn."

  Silence.

  A cold feeling rippled down her spine.

  Gemma closed her eyes, her hearing focusing intently. There. The faintest sound of gravel shifting, as if beneath someone's foot.

  Right behind her.

  Gemma spun, stabbing the button of the illuminator, and not daring to open her eyes. A bright light flashed, searing her closed eyelids, and someone screamed.

  One second of intense light, and then the whine died down.

  Gemma shot into the night, spraying bullet fire in a half-circle in front of her, before she dared open her eyes. She'd lost her night vision. Blackened shapes reared around her, and she almost tripped on a headstone, blinking furiously.

  A shape moaned on the ground to her left.

  "Bloody hell. What did you just do to me?"

  Gemma turned her pistol upon him. One bullet left, if she was counting accurately.

  "Pull the trigger and the girl dies," he gasped.

  Gemma froze.

  "Where is she?" she demanded.

  The bastard panted, hand clapped over his chest and one side of his face burned as he pushed to his hands and knees. Behind him, she could hear the shouting growing louder. "Out of the way, luv. I know a certain someone who wouldn't 'preciate it if I ripped your head off your shoulders. It's the only thing savin' your life right now. I just have to keep tellin' myself that."

  "Strange. I was fairly certain I had a target on my back. Several of your brethren have tried to murder me in the last month."

  "And where are they now?" He staggered to his feet. "Bottom of the Thames? I suppose we could ask our mutual friend."

  "Don't move." She focused her pistol right on his heart.

  "You're runnin' out of time, Miss Townsend. You have barely a minute to save the girl's life, so you'll have to make a decision. The girl. Or me."

  Gemma's teeth clenched. "What do you mean?"

  "I had my orders. Malloryn's not supposed to find her ‘til it's too late, but if someone else were to get to her first, well... I did as instructed. Tick, tock, Miss Townsend."

  The dhampir vanished into the fog, and Gemma turned helplessly toward the pale figure she'd seen in front of the memorial.

  Blood.

  Sprinting toward the mound, she could just make out the beginnings of pale skirts. Miss Hamilton lay sprawled on her back, her eyes closed and her arms curled around a small ticking package.

  Oh, no. Gemma slid to the young woman's side, feeling for a pulse in her throat. There. Thready and weak, but there. There was a lump on the side of her head.

  She examined the bomb. Less than twenty seconds remained on the clock face attached to it, and a thin wire was attached to the bracelet on the young woman's wrist. A single move and it would detonate, she was sure. "It's all right, Miss Hamilton. I've got you. You're going to live, I promise."

  Curse him.

  Curse them all.

  Gemma eased out a slow breath as she slid her fingers around the very edge of the package. One. Two. Three.

  She tore the bomb free and flung it, throwing herself over the girl. The fiery detonation washed over her, raining a hail of marble pebbles down over her. They stung her skin and pelted into her legs, but she'd heal.

  Malloryn suddenly slid to a halt at her side, spraying gravel. "Miss Hamilton? Is she all right?"

  Gemma's ears were ringing as she lifted herself up. "I think so."

  Malloryn pressed a hand to Miss Hamilton's forehead. "She feels like ice. Where's the Chameleon?" he barked, stripping out of his coat.

  "I don't know. I shot him, but I had to save Miss Hamilton."

  And was that really the Chameleon?

  Obsidian had told her it wasn't, and the dhampir's mocking voice and sarcastic tone sounded nothing like those of a cold-blooded killer.

  She needed to return to the catacombs and question a certain enemy agent before any of the others stumbled upon him.

  Malloryn's lips thinned, but he nodded. "You made the right choice."

  Easing his coat around his fiancée's shoulders, Malloryn hauled her dead weight up into his arms. Golden ringlets tumbled over his sleeve, and Miss Hamilton moaned.

  Malloryn looked down at her with a strange look on his face. "Well. The odds certainly weren't in my favor today. Tell me... was anyone betting an assassin would kidnap the bride before she could say I do, or does no one win the kitty?"

  "Malloryn."

  The smile he gave her had a knife-edge to it. "Thank you, Gemma. You saved her life. Take the night off. You look like you need a good sleep. Tomorrow, we renew the hunt." His smile vanished as he glanced up at the memorial in front of him, and the elegant scrolled writing embossed across it. Catherine Tate. For a second, his expression froze, and then he looked down again, balancing his fiancée in his arms.

  "I want the Chameleon's head," he said in a lethal voice, "and I will have it."

  Chapter 20

  The bride was home safely, disaster averted, and the Company of Rogues dispersed for the night, grateful for having survived the day in one piece. There'd been no sign of Obsidian in the catacombs, and Gemma wasn't certain whether she was relieved or not.

  He wasn't going to appreciate being hemlocked.

  And she had quite the bone to pick with him in regards to Miss Hamilton.

  Gemma retreated to her bedchambers, peeling off her long leather gloves as she entered the room.

  Tossing the gloves aside, she felt the cool breeze on her skin, and—

  The window was open, the curtains blowing in a way reminiscent of Miss Hamilton's bedchambers. Fatigue sloughed off her in an instant and Gemma slipped her hand through her slit skirts and drew one of the sai sheathed against her thigh as she pressed her back to the wall, dropping her handful of pins on the carpet. The room was empty; nothing moved.

  But her heart raced in the stillness of the night.

  Someone had been in here.

  And then her eye locked on the single sheet of folded paper on the bed. Only one person could have gotten into her rooms undetected, despite the risks.

  All the tension eased out of her, replaced by something that burned a little hotter, a little tighter, and she gritted her teeth as she stalked toward the letter. Damn him.

  Saint Petersburg haunted her. Stolen moments in the midst of chaos; secret rendezvous where they could pretend they were alone in the world without an entire spy war between them. They'd traded notes then, using a plethora of servants and tactics such as breaking into each other’s rooms, just like this.

  Stealing away at a ball to kiss him in a shadowed alcove. A day at the Hermitage Museum, where Gemma marveled at the art and pretended she was merely a young woman strolling with her beau. An afternoon tucked away in a carriage, exploring the canals and streets. Sipping svekolnik, a cold borscht soup. Laughing as they lay naked under a blanket, before a blazing fire. All they'd ever truly had were moments.

  Gemma flicked the note open. If he thought to sway her with nostalgic memories, then he was sorely mistaken, especially after the day's events.

  We need to talk. Come and find me. If you can....

  "Son of a bitch," she growled, screwing the piece of paper into a crumpled mess and heading for the window.

  Talk? Ha. They certainly did have much to discuss.

  Two minutes later she was slipping over the rooftops, a foggy London spread beneath he
r. Lamplight glowed in the fog, like little fuzzy will-o’-the-wisps. Gemma surveyed the roofline.

  Where would he be?

  A single candle lingered in the open window of a neglected tower to her right. Gemma's gaze locked on it.

  Of course he would have to make her climb a bloody tower in her heeled boots and the gown she'd worn to the wedding.

  Fine. Gemma withdrew the other sai from her left thigh and gripped it between her teeth. It left her free to tuck a loop of her skirts into the leather holster wrapped intimately around her thigh, revealing a healthy slice of her gossamer stockings. She hauled herself up the interlacing brickwork, her toes finding crevices between the coarse bricks and her fingers clinging in minute cracks.

  Gemma gained the window ledge, and a figure loomed out of the shadows, dressed in stark, imposing black. A violent grace filled every step he made; a lethal intensity. He'd stripped to his leather waistcoat, and the broad planes of his chest and shoulders filled out his shirt, but that was the last thing she wanted to notice right now.

  "Here," Obsidian murmured, offering her his hand.

  Like hell.

  Gemma scrambled over the ledge and plucked the sai from her teeth. "What the hell did you think you were doing, leaving a note on my bed like that? Are you trying to get yourself killed? The house is watched, damn you. Herbert's been instructed to shoot all pale-haired intruders with a dart laced with Black Vein. Not even you could survive that."

  Obsidian refused to back away, and her fury roused at the fact she had to look up to see his face. The bloody bastard had almost a foot of height on her.

  "He would have to notice me."

  "Herbert is a trained assassin." Somehow she managed to grind the words out between her teeth. "One of Malloryn's best."

  "He's not that good. It's not the first time I've been in your room, Gemma."

  Her fist curled around the sai, and she gave in to the instinctive rush of her fury and sliced the top button of his waistcoat with a flick of her wrist. It felt good. Even as he captured her wrist and forcibly took the sai from her.

  It didn't matter. She had another.

  The edge of violence thickened between them, and instinctively she settled into a defensive stance, prepared to take him down if he made a single move. Tension shivered through the air, as their eyes met. Then Obsidian whirled the sai in his fingers and captured the needle-sharp prong in the center, examining the balance.

  He offered it to her. "This is my favorite waistcoat."

  "You made me climb the damned tower in a dress."

  "You didn't have to. You could have removed it." Heat curled through his dark eyes; a faint taunting smile curved his mouth. I dare you, his eyes said, and her breath caught, because there was her Dmitri. "As this week has proven, you seem to enjoy flaunting yourself."

  It was as though pieces of him were swimming to the surface, inch by inch.

  The hardest part of the last week in captivity had been watching the man she'd once loved and not recognizing a damned thing about him.

  But he was still there.

  "And you seemed to enjoy pretending you weren't looking."

  His lashes fluttered lower. "I was looking."

  "I know."

  "I couldn't help myself," he admitted, his thumb stroking her fingers as she took possession of her sai. "You have a way of twisting me into knots."

  Her breath caught, leaving her feeling somewhat disconcerted. "Don't think your words can turn me up sweet. Shall we cut to the chase?"

  "You hemlocked me," Obsidian stated flatly.

  "You lied to me," she snapped back.

  "I fail to see how."

  "You know who the Chameleon is."

  He turned away, unable to look her in the face, and a horrible suspicion filled her. "Leave it alone, Gemma."

  "Is it you?" she whispered.

  He stared at the floor, his head bent. "Not this time."

  Not this time? "What the hell does that mean?"

  "Haven't you figured it out yet?" His head turned, his gaze tracking hers.

  Gemma took a rushed step toward him, and then paused. "Today, your friend was the Chameleon," she whispered. "But you have played this part in the past."

  Of course. That was why the Chameleon had always been so bloody difficult to capture; it had never been one person. All those misleading witness statements—young, old, bearded, gray-haired....

  She'd never truly been hunting for one assassin.

  And Jonathan Carlyle paid the price for all the others.

  "Oh, my goodness," she whispered. "Who's the current Chameleon? Who's going after the queen?"

  Obsidian shook his head. "I can't tell you that."

  He'd said too much.

  "You mean you won't. You could stop this," she whispered. "There would be no more deaths, no more chaos in the city. There could be peace—"

  "This doesn't stop until the Duke of Malloryn is dead," he growled out, clenching his fist. "It ends when everything he's ever loved is ash, his entire life's work smashed into rubble around him."

  The expression on her face—

  "I am part of his work," she said, taking a step back from him. "I have been there every step of the way as Malloryn fought to build something I believe in. I love him, Obsidian. He's my family. Would you see me smashed aside, beneath this... this cursed vendetta?"

  She didn't understand.

  "I was trying to remove you from the equation."

  Gemma started shaking her head, her fingers curled into helpless fists. "No. No, no, no. This isn't happening. Don't you dare say you kidnapped me so I would be safe when everyone I loved was slaughtered. Don't you dare say you tried to protect me at the expense of everyone else."

  His heart was an empty, gaping hole in his chest.

  "I couldn't let you die. But I can't stop the others from being caught in the crossfire."

  "You son of a bitch." She shoved him, pushed again when he staggered back a step.

  "My hands are tied."

  "Bullshit," she shot back. "You don't have to work for Ghost. Every time you take his orders, you make a choice."

  "This is bigger than Ghost. Bigger than me. The second I make a countermove, I'm dead, Gemma. Or worse, you are. Do you have any idea what you’re facing?"

  "No, I damned well don't know what we're facing. Why don't you tell me?"

  The second he did, she was dead.

  Ghost would never let him go, and Gemma would never forfeit her ideals. Especially not with her hatred for Balfour driving her to take him down. Obsidian couldn’t stop the cataclysmic clash they were headed toward.

  Or could he?

  "Run away with me," he whispered.

  Gemma's head jerked up. "What?"

  Obsidian cupped her face in his hands. The words were as much a surprise to him as they were to her, but the second he breathed them into the world, he gave them life. They swelled, filling the gaping hole in his chest. An answer. A damned answer where neither of them needed to yield. "You and me. We could leave all this behind us. Run away together and never look back."

  The more he thought of it, the more alluring the idea became.

  "No more dhampir. No more killing. No more ruin. We could flee to the Americas. Create a new life for ourselves." He desperately needed her to say yes. "All I need is you."

  But he knew her answer even before she opened her mouth to reply.

  Agony gleamed in her blue eyes. "Obsidian—"

  The desperate need to still her words slammed through him, and he took her mouth, trapping the answer inside her. If she couldn't give it life, then he could linger here, in a dream world where they could be together.

  Gemma kissed him back, her fingers twining through his hair, and her mouth just as hungry as his. Obsidian's hand slid down over the curve of her ass, and he hauled her against him, grabbing a fistful of what remained of her bustle. The crush of her breasts against his chest ignited the blood rushing through his veins, and her be
lly pressed against the flushed rousing of his cock. All he needed was Gemma. He devoured her with quick, helpless kisses until he could barely breathe.

  Until he was dizzy with it—

  She pushed against his chest, drawing back with a gasp. "No. No, I can't. You're asking me to throw away the lives of everyone I love. And I will not do that. Not even for you."

  Stalemate.

  He'd always known it would come to this.

  "Gemma...."

  "Please," she whispered, taking his hands. "Please help me stop them. With you on our side, we cannot fail."

  "Gemma." He pressed his forehead to hers. "The second I betray them, I'm dead."

  Or worse.

  They would turn him against her again.

  "Malloryn will protect you. I know he will."

  "Stop." He clasped his fingers over her lips, stilling the words. "You can't hide me from what's inside me. It doesn't matter where I go in this cursed city. My only hope is to leave the country—to get as far out of Ghost's range as I possibly can."

  Stillness leached through her, and she looked up.

  "I am not the man I once was, Gemma." He tried to make her see. "Malloryn had you all implanted with a tracking beacon when you began to work for him, didn't he?"

  Suspicion darkened her eyes. "You removed yours."

  "I have what is called a neural regulating actuator implant in my brain. It took me years to even realize it was there. I have these... moments... where I black out. I lose time sometimes. And my memories are full of holes. Sometimes I can wake to find myself in a place with no idea how I got there."

  "What are you trying to say?"

  "There is a Dr. Richter working for Ghost. He's spent years perfecting the implant, and it killed most of the initial trial patients. It forces you to obey. You don't even know what you're doing."

  Her mind was racing behind her eyes, but they suddenly lifted to his, and he could see the truth dawning in them like a sunrise.

  "You shot me," she whispered.

  He brushed his knuckles down the sides of her cheeks, unable to meet her gaze. "I can't remember pulling the trigger," he confessed. "All I can see is the moment you started falling. The last thing I knew before that moment was drinking a glass of blood with Silas as he checked my burns. And then I was on the bridge, and you were gone." His voice roughened. "It's all starting to come back to me. I thought I'd killed you. I couldn't stop thinking of the look on your face when you fell. I tried to find your body, but there was no sign of you, and then the explosion happened.... I barely escaped with my life. But I would never—"