Dreadfully Ever After (34 page)

“Lizzy! Trade!” Kitty shouted, throwing her battle axe toward her sister.

Elizabeth tossed up her katana.

The weapons crossed in midair. Then each woman snatched down her new weapon and went on the attack.

Elizabeth sent the axe spinning end over end toward Ren while Kitty leapt feet first into the wall and sent herself rocketing across the room—straight at Nezu. She only barely missed both Kenjis’ swiping scythes and Dr. Sleaford, who was busily undoing the restraints that still held down his legs.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said once she’d landed in a crouch before Nezu.

He jabbed at her with Fukushuu as she straightened, but it was a half-hearted thrust, easily parried.

“The past is the past, though,” Kitty went on. “We can’t live there. We have to live here. Now.”

Again, he sent Fukushuu at her heart, and again she easily turned the blade aside.

“We can honor what lies behind us without being a slave to it,” Kitty said. “It’s time you faced what could lie ahead. You wouldn’t have to do it alone, you know.”

Nezu’s thrusts started coming more quickly now, yet Kitty kept deflecting them. She kept talking, too.

“You once asked me how I could be a warrior and remain so human. I suppose it’s because I never saw the two things as mutually exclusive. And so what if they are? Then I would be neither a true warrior nor a true lady. I would be something for which there is no label. And I wouldn’t care. Just call me Kitty!”

“You are babbling,” Nezu said as his blade clanged again and again against hers. “If there is some point to all this, I cannot make it out.”

“Then allow me to make it as clear as possible.”

Kitty lowered her sword, then dropped it.

“
You
can decide what you are, Nezu.”

Behind her, the room was still a chaotic swirl of hacking and punching and kicking and biting and dying. A gun went off. Someone screamed. A bloody hand landed at Kitty’s feet. Yet she remained utterly still, even though with one swing of Nezu’s sword, she would be dead.

“If you truly must obey your mistress, if you truly must have revenge, then you can start with me,” she said. “But if you choose to follow your own path ... well, you can start that with me, too, if you like.”

Nezu looked into her eyes.

She smiled.

He threw himself forward, thrusting out his katana as far as he could, sinking it deep into soft belly flesh.

“Omae aho ya de ...,”
croaked Kenji, who’d been rushing up behind Kitty with his scythes raised high.

You are
such
an ass
.

As the man toppled over sideways, Nezu simply let go of his sword handle, and Fukushuu dropped away with the dead ninja. Then Nezu slipped a hand into his coat pocket, pulled out the vial containing the cure, and handed it to Kitty.

“Thank you,” she said.

Nezu looked down at Kenji’s crumpled, bloody body.

“I am no longer Shinobi,” he said. “I do not know
what
I am.”

“Oh, that’s simple.” Kitty wrapped an arm around his. “You’re one of us!”

She started leading him from the laboratory, and he numbly noticed the black-wrapped torsos they were stepping over as they went. All the other ninjas were dead.

“It appears the doctor escaped in the confusion,” Elizabeth said as she and Mary and the Man and his dogs followed Kitty and Nezu out.

“He could cause trouble for us,” the Man said.

When they were all in the hallway, they found Gurdaya and her brother kneeling beside a closed door. The rest of the prisoners had fled.

“You are free to go,” Mary said to them.

“Go where?” the girl replied.

The sounds of slurping and munching could be heard from the other side of the door.

“What’s in there?” Kitty asked.

“Barry,” the boy said.

“Barry?”

“Subject Six,” Gurdaya explained.

“It sounds like he’s not alone,” Nezu said.

“That’s because he’s not,” the boy said.

There was an especially loud crunch from inside the closet.

No one bothered asking the children if they’d seen where Dr. Sleaford went.

“You know what?” Elizabeth said to them instead. “I think it’s high time you two went on holiday, don’t you? How does Hertfordshire sound?”

She held out her hands.

The children took them.

Darcy’s strength faded during the long walk back to Rosings, but his resolve did not. When he reached the manor house, he went straight to the trophy room and retrieved his aunt’s hara-kiri sword—the one he would use to gut himself.

He would do it in his room, he’d decided. Immediately. Daylight was fading, and his aunt would be back any minute, covering the miles on her white charger much more quickly than he had on foot. He didn’t want her or his cousin interfering.

Even with Lady Catherine’s treatments, his world was lost to him forever, and if Anne was anything to judge by, his humanity would soon follow.

A “life” of half-death and obscene appetites ... and without Elizabeth? No. Time to die. It would be his final gift to his beloved wife: a widow’s freedom to fight. Perhaps he could make her happier in death than he had in life.

He paused for one last look through the trophy room’s long picture window. The grounds hadn’t changed in nearly thirty years. He could almost see himself out there, engaged in a round of Stricken and Slayers with Anne. Even when they were children, she’d been good at playing dreadful. He never had any idea she was near until she leapt out from behind a stack of cannonballs or a topiary shogun and “ate” him.

And then there she was, doing it again. A glance away and back, and the grounds were deserted no longer: Anne was halfway to the house from the dojo. Perhaps she’d been visiting her zombie friends again, biding her time until her cousin chose to join her little salon of the undead. Darcy would see to it that she had a long, long wait.

He started to leave, intending to hurry to his room and do what he had to quickly, but a flurry of movement on the lawn turned him toward the window yet again.

A man on horseback had ridden around the side of the house and was approaching Anne. His presumption was extraordinary. His appearance was shocking.

He was a big heavy-featured man with a sweaty face, bristly chin whiskers, and fiery eyes. The luminosity Darcy could see around him seemed to ebb and flow, strobing from almost blinding bright to a dull gray glow.

As Darcy watched, the man slid from his saddle, shoved a hand under his dust-covered coat, and produced a stubby pepper-box pistol—which he proceeded to point at Anne.

Darcy raced from the room, and seconds later he was bursting out of the servant’s entrance at the back of the house, his aunt’s suicide sword still clutched in one hand. The man swung his gun on him as he came closer, and it occurred to Darcy that there might be no call for hara-kiri after all. Perhaps the stranger would spare him the trouble.

“Stay back!” Anne cried out when she saw Darcy. “This needn’t concern you!”

She looked even paler than usual—a feat on order with the Atlantic growing wetter.

The woman could walk among unmentionables without a care, yet this man, whoever he was, seemed to fill her with fear?

Darcy kept approaching.

“What is the meaning of this?” he called to the man. “Who are you?”

“He is a lunatic, that is all,” Anne said. “He rides out here from Sevenoaks from time to time to spew his fantasies of persecution. He’s no danger as long as we—”

“I am Sir Angus MacFarquharrr,” the man said firmly (and with a burr as thick as a Highlands porridge).

“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.