My Lady Quicksilver

Fifteen

A mocking laugh filled the alley.

Rosalind looked up as a shadow separated itself from the rest. A tall man wearing a heavy leather seaman’s coat lumbered forward. He didn’t bother to hide the sharp hook he wore instead of a left hand, his heavy-lidded gaze sliding over her.

“Well, now. Look what we got, boys. A Nighthawk by the looks of it. And a well-rounded tart.” A smile split his broad face. “The craver for Mordecai, and the bitch for me.”

She watched the hook, her gaze following its hypnotic motions. Years ago, seeing a glimpse of that would have been any East-Ender’s worst nightmare. The slasher gangs that had roamed these parts used whatever scrap metal they could find to enhance themselves. Some said they even cut the limbs from their own flesh to replace with cruel hooks and sharp blades in order to join the gangs. The better to drag a body to Undertown, where they’d strap it to a gurney and drain it of blood for profit.

Three years ago, a vampire had taken care of most of them, with the Devil of Whitechapel cleaning up the rest. Obviously some few had escaped.

And Mordecai must have allied himself with them, giving them the secret of hemlock.

“I’m afraid I’ve got a prior engagement.” Rosalind watched the shadows. Slashers used to run in packs, hunting their prey like wild dogs. There’d be more of them.

A second man slid free of the encroaching fog. Then a third. Rosalind glanced up as something shifted in her peripheral vision and saw more on the roof.

At her feet Lynch made a helpless noise in his throat. A sudden burning fierceness in her chest took her by surprise. They weren’t going to get their hands on him. She’d make sure of that.

“Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I won’t leave you.”

“Get her,” the slasher said with a contemptuous wave of his hook. “And tie that bleeder up before he comes to.”

Rosalind’s hand dipped to her pocket and came out with the pistol. She took a step away from Lynch to give herself room to work. “Don’t move,” she said coldly, aiming the pistol at the lead slasher’s forehead. “Or all the metal in the world won’t fill this hole.”

He grinned slowly. “That’s a pretty little toy, lass. You know how to use it?”

“Would you care for a demonstration?” Rosalind pulled the trigger.

The slasher staggered back, his eyes rolling up in his head and a red dot blooming in the middle of his forehead. His body hit the ground hard and Rosalind was moving, leaning low to take the knife from her boot. She preferred a pistol but in these streets it wasn’t wise to draw too much attention.

The two remaining men stepped forward, expressions blunt and hard. One of them took the lead, his ugly face marred by what looked like a half dozen scars.

“I’m going to keep you alive for that,” he promised. “For a very long time.”

“I have no such compunctions.” She leaped over Lynch’s broad back, grateful that he was lying face-first and couldn’t see.

The man met her blade with one of his own; a knife grafted to his forearm, no doubt drilled into the bone. Rosalind swirled, the skirts barely hampering her as she released the Carillion blade in her iron hand. It slipped between his ribs with a surgeon’s ease, then she slashed down with her other knife, dragging it across the inside of his thigh. Blood sprayed across her skirts, hot and coppery as she hit the femoral artery.

He went down with a scream and she spun low, hooking the toe of her boot behind the other man’s heel with feral grace. Anger burned hot in her throat. She wanted this, needed it. Anything to drive away that helpless feeling and unleash the tide of hopelessness within her.

As he hit the ground, she was upon him, slamming her heel into the vulnerable bones of his throat. A satisfying crunch filled the air.

Noise whistled in the eerie fog. Rosalind spun, knife held flat. Then something heavy dropped over her and she went to her knees under a net, the ends weighted with lead.

Damn her skirts! She tried to kick, but the net was tangled hopelessly with her bustle and she’d dropped the bloody knife. A pair of boots landed in front of her, then the sound of another. Rosalind slashed desperately at the net with her Carillion blade. It sawed through the thick hemp with ease, but then hands caught her by the upper arms and she was dragged upright, the net wrapped round and round her ankles.

“No!” She jerked hard, the first hint of unease seeping insidiously through her veins. “What are you doing? Get your hands off me!”

The world upended as someone dragged her over their shoulder. Through the net, she glimpsed a pair of men kneeling over Lynch and something flared white-hot within her.

“What are you doing to him?” She kicked desperately.

“Take her down below,” someone snapped. “Throw the bitch in a cell while we get the bleeder contained.”

The giant beneath her turned around and Rosalind lost her view of Lynch. “No! Help! Someone help!” she screamed, feeling dread for the first time in years.

If they hurt him… She shook her head. He was invincible. A blue blood. Surely he could get free and save himself.

But they’d paralyzed him with hemlock. She of all people knew only too well how to incapacitate blue bloods—and keep them that way.

“No!”

They strapped him into a set of manacles and dragged him high using a winch. Lynch jerked into the air, unable to do a damned thing to stop himself from being hung like a slab of beef. He hated this, hated the vulnerability.

The cell was deep in Undertown. They’d blindfolded him and wrapped him tight with chains, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been able to make some sense of where they’d taken them. The smell of tar and rope lingered in the air as they entered the tunnels—somewhere near Sailmaker’s Lane if he wasn’t mistaken. From there, it had been a brief journey down through the chilly tunnels to this godforsaken cell where they’d ripped the blindfold off.

The leader strode through the door with a scowl of frustration. “String ’er up too.”

“Get your hands off me!”

Lynch fought to lift his heavy head, trying to see what they were doing to Rosa. Red flared through his vision as two men dragged her into the cell. Her hands were bound behind her, blood sprayed across her skirts, but she squirmed in their grasp as if she thought to free herself.

One of them balled his fist and smashed her in the abdomen. Rosa gasped, crumpling over the man’s arm with a soft cry. Kill them… Lynch stirred, his leg kicking faintly. The muscles in his shoulders ached as he strained to get some movement into his body. Anything other than hanging here uselessly.

Where the hell was Byrnes? He should have doubled back once he noticed Lynch was missing.

The leader stepped back as they dragged Rosa’s gloved hands into another set of manacles and yanked her high. The toe of her boots dragged on the ground, then she cried out as they winched her into the air. Whatever sort of operation they were running here, they knew what they were doing.

The barest light gleamed through the heavy cell door. Lynch caught Rosa’s gaze and saw the frustration and pain echoed there. She stopped kicking when she saw him, taking a deep, shuddering breath, her dark eyes rich with fear.

“Did…they hurt you…?” he managed to rasp.

Rosa shook her head. “No.”

With a laugh, the leader slapped Lynch’s thigh, sending him swinging, the toes of his boots dragging over the cold stone floors. “Don’t need to.” A broad smile lit his ugly face. “That’s what you’re ’ere for.”

Words. Just words. But ice ran down his spine at the thought. He looked at Rosa, her coppery hair bedraggled and tumbling around her pale face. She bit her lip and shifted against the weight dragging on her shoulders. Lynch’s gaze raked over the cell. It was bare, but he could see faint splashes of darkness against the walls. Blood. Sprayed across the walls as if someone had torn a man’s throat out.

He went cold.

That’s what you’re ’ere for…

They wouldn’t have to hurt Rosa. He would. He knew it as certainly as he knew his own name. These men were involved with the massacres somehow. The mechs that Mercury spoke of.

He didn’t know what they’d done to Haversham, Falcone, and Alistair, but he had a suspicion he was about to find out.

No. He jerked—or tried to. Every muscle in his body felt sluggish, as if they’d weighted his bones down with steel implants.

“All right, boys,” the leader called. “Let’s leave ’em to their fate.” He met Lynch’s eyes with a leer. “I’ll be seein’ you in an hour or so, Sir Nighthawk.”

Then the cell door clanged shut behind them.

“Rosa.”

She kicked uselessly. The muscles in her abdomen ached and she still hadn’t quite gotten her breath back, or else she’d have protested more.

“Rosa.” Lynch’s voice was cool, but something warned her—some underlying hint of tension.

She looked across at him. Bars of light striped his face from the small barred window in the cell door. Movement stirred in his limbs, signs that the hemlock was finally wearing off. They must have hit him with a huge dose in order to keep him down for so long.

“What?” she whispered.

For a moment, an unknown emotion crossed his face, there and gone so swiftly she didn’t recognize it. Her breath caught and she stilled, staring across the shadowed expanse at him.

“They took your pistol, didn’t they?” he asked. “Do you have anything at all that might be used as a weapon?”

Only herself and her training, but he could not be allowed to know that. “No. I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing to fight them with.”

His expression tightened. He cursed under his breath and looked around. “Are your manacles fastened tight? Can you get free?”

His urgency burned through her. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Just answer the damned question!” he snapped.

It shocked her. He’d never once been frightened. And that was what she recognized in his clenching fists as he strained against the manacles.

Rosalind licked her lips and looked up. “Maybe,” she admitted. “I have several pins in my hair. I might be able to pick the lock on these.”

“Do it.”

Pressing her lips tightly together, she put all her weight onto her right wrist and reached up to grab a loop of chain with her left. Her iron hand clutched tight around the links and she hauled herself up, high enough to dig her right hand into her hair. Her fingers finally locked around the edge of a pin and she tugged it free with a gasp, her body weight tumbling back against the manacles. This would have been easy ten years ago, but she no longer trained every day as she had under Balfour’s care. Then she’d been fit and limber and far stronger than she was now.

“Got it,” she gasped, her shoulders aching against the swing of the manacles.

Voices sounded in the corridor outside the cell. Their eyes met.

“You need to get out, Rosa,” he said. “Pick the lock and get out. Get as far away from here as you can.”

A laugh outside. Her gaze jerked that way as someone yanked open an iron trapdoor in the door.

“Give ’er me regards, Sir Nighthawk.”

Rosalind flinched as something was thrown into the room. The iron ball was barely the size of Lynch’s closed fist and it rattled across the stone floors, bouncing off the far wall before spinning to a halt in the center of the room. It looked almost like the clockwork tumbler balls that children played with in the alleys aboveground, chasing them until they finally wound down. Like one of the balls they’d found in Falcone’s dining room.

She stared, cold sweat lining her lip. What the devil was it? And why was Lynch staring at it as one would eye a live snake? He strained against the manacles, a silent snarl on his lips as he jerked and twisted.

“I’d love to stay and watch the final test,” the stranger called. “But you cravers don’t take kindly to being locked up. We’ll be nearby…for when it’s over.”

The iron trapdoor slammed shut and then the laughter was edging away.

“Lynch,” she whispered, fear knifing through her. “What’s going on?”

The iron ball quivered, a thin line becoming apparent around its circumference as though some internal pressure fought to force it open.

“This is what they did to Falcone,” Lynch snarled. He fought furiously, twisting his body up to try and wrench the manacles from the ceiling. “I’m sure of it. You have to get out.”

What they did to Falcone… She stared at him for a long moment as his words penetrated. He’d known. Somehow he’d known what was to come—just as he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from hurting her.

She saw the truth in his eyes as he flailed helplessly, then fell still, panting hard. He couldn’t free himself. He had been weakened by the hemlock until he was almost human in strength, but if the bloodlust hit him the way it had done to Haversham or Falcone or his cousin…he would be unstoppable. That’s why he’d asked her if she had anything on her that might be a weapon. It wasn’t to use against the mechs. No, it was to use against him.

The heat drained from her face, her hand tingling with numbness.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She looked away, frightened by the defeat in his eyes. “I’m not going to let you kill me.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Think, damn you. She’d survived worse than this. If there was one gift that Balfour had ever given her, it was this—the urge to survive against all odds.

The ball started shaking so hard it quivered across the floor. Almost open.

“I want you,” she said slowly, “to think of buttons.”

Lynch’s gaze shot to hers. “What?”

“My buttons, to be more specific.”

“Rosa!”

“I’m going to escape,” she added. “But I’ve heard that a blue blood has strong… urges. Strong hungers.”

He caught her meaning. “The bloodlust is stronger.”

“We’ll test that theory as a last resort,” Rosalind replied, her fingers tightening around the pin in her hand. “You want me, my lord. So think about my breasts, which you can never quite take your eyes off, and that afternoon in the library where you left me quite unsatisfied.” Kicking her legs up, she locked an ankle around one of the chains, her skirts falling over her head.

The iron ball popped apart with a hiss, steam pouring through small vents around its middle.

Lynch coughed. “Hurry!”

A sweet scent caught her nose as the cloud of steam drifted across the cobbles, hanging low for the moment. It wound around Lynch’s dangling legs and for a second she saw his fear again.

He couldn’t give into the fear. If he did, then he would be lost completely.

Rosalind swallowed, her pin sliding into the lock. Success. She let out her breath. “You never asked,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm.

“Never asked what?”

“Whether I obeyed your final instruction in the observatory that day. Whether I waited for you.”

For a moment Lynch’s gaze locked on hers. Shadows flickered through his eyes, stealing the color from them. He shut them tight. “This isn’t helping.”

“You’re going to lose control,” she said bluntly. “Try and think—”

“I am not going to lose control,” he snapped, a muscle in his jaw tightening. “I can’t. I won’t.”

The steam writhed around him with hungry tendrils. And Rosalind finally understood him. The reason he had never taken from the vein and strictly controlled his intake of blood. This was his greatest fear—the loss of control, the bloodlust. For the first time, she realized what it would be like to be stricken with the craving, to fight against instinct and need, when it would be so much easier to give into it.

“I know you can fight this.”

“Don’t trust me,” he gasped. “Get your hands on a weapon—anything—and don’t be afraid to use it.”

The steam rose, obscuring her view of his body. Lynch strained, trying to lift himself above it.

Rosalind turned her attention to the lock. She slid the pin inside it, fumbling blindly in the near dark.

The lock finally clicked.

Wrenching the manacle open, she flexed her steel fingers, then gripped the chain above her right hand. She didn’t have time for finesse. Instead, she yanked hard, her bio-mech hand breaking the links of the manacle.

“Bollocks!” Her eyes flew wide as she started to fall. Hitting the ground hard, she lay for one panicked, breathless moment.

“Rosa? Are you free?”

“I’m free.” She rolled onto her hands and knees with a wince. Steam obscured the room and she coughed as the cloying, sticky-sweet smell of it clotted her lungs.

“Can you… get out?”

Feeling along the wall, she saw the bright bands of light against the foggy darkness. The door!

Lynch was a dark shadow in the mist. Rosa kicked the iron ball away into the corner, stilling when she saw his gleaming eyes lock on her. Like prey.

“Did you?” he gasped, clenching and unclenching his fists. A shudder ran through his body.

“Did I what?”

“Did you wait?”

She backed away from him as his eyes turned black with fierce need. He clenched them tight, trying to hold on to himself.

“I waited,” she whispered. “I’m still waiting.”

Slowly, she reached out behind her for the door, feeling for the lock in the darkness. Her pin had twisted. She’d need another. But she couldn’t, for the moment, take her eyes off him. Steam obscured him completely and he jerked, still fighting, even now, not to lose control of himself.

Rosalind could barely see him. But she heard a low hiss of breath, a sound that terrified her, despite her intentions. And then the sound of metal straining as he tore at his manacles.

“Run,” he pleaded. Another strained laugh, as if he fought to hold it back. “For God’s sake, run!”

Rosalind turned and jammed another pin into the lock, her heart rabbiting in her chest in terror.

He’d just lost the battle.