Kiss of Steel (47 page)

She looked up. Instead of hurt or despair, a sudden gleam of burning intensity lit her face. Her skirts tumbled around her thighs as she straightened off the bed, Blade’s diary clutched in her hand. “I tested your CV levels yesterday. They were at seventy-six.”

Blade froze. “That ain’t possible.”

Both of their gazes shot toward the small brass spectrometer.

“I know they were seventy-six,” she said, sweeping toward it. “I was surprised at how…high they were. You’ve never spoken of it.”

A polite rebuke.

“I ’ad a few things on me mind,” he replied, striding after her.

Honoria held out her hand, the other reaching for the small needle. Blade hesitated.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said, misunderstanding. “I’m very accomplished at this. I’ve done it for years at the Institute.”

He sucked in a deep breath. “It ain’t that. Me levels ain’t ever come down before. It’s unheard of.” He slowly put his hand into hers. “What if it were just an error?”

Honoria stroked his fingers. “Then we’ll find out. Together.” She eased his finger onto the brass plate. The sharp little needle spiked down, driving into his flesh with a stinging ache. Blood welled. Honoria tilted his hand and held it over the small glass vial, squeezing the skin to encourage the blood to flow.

One drop. Two. Another for good measure. He watched it sluggishly spread across the bottom of the vial. Honoria stoppered three accompanying drops of hydrate of soda into the vial, then slid it into the spectrometer. Pressing a button, she toyed with the pair of dials until she’d found the right frequency. Depending upon the level of acidic reaction, the little brass cogs would whirl into place, giving them a readout of his virus levels.

It was a breathless moment. He couldn’t look.

“It will be all right,” Honoria murmured. “I still have my father’s notes if I need them. I
know
he was on the verge of something. He spoke of little else in the days before he died. And we have time, a little of it anyway.”

There was a sharp click. Honoria leaned forward, the sound of her weight shifting on the timber floorboards.

“Well?” The words stuck in his throat.

“Look,” she whispered.

The little dial hovered at seventy-six.

“I know I wrote ’em down right,” he said, the strength in his knees starting to give out. Honoria caught him under the arms as he looked down in surprise. “They was seventy-eight. I know they was.” The last was a whisper.

Honoria staggered back, guiding him to a chair. “It’s not the sort of mistake you would be making for months.” An enormous smile lit her face. “You’ve got columns of figures and dates. March the thirty-first was the last time you were at seventy-six.”

“The machine might be skewed—”

Honoria settled on his lap, her hands cupping his face. “We’ll buy a new one, but it looks perfectly fine to me. I don’t know how…” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Nothing has changed? Your dietary intake? Sleep patterns? Living habits?”

He gave a raw chuckle. “A lot’s changed, luv.” His hands were trembling. For the first time he allowed himself to hope. He’d long thought himself immured to the thought of what was going to happen. But then Honoria had come into his life. For the first time in years he
wanted
to live. “But nothin’ unusual. There’s always problems to deal with in the rookery. Me sleep falls by the wayside, and I drink more chilled blood, but it’s been done before. Ain’t never caused me levels to fall.”

She kissed him. “You stupid fool. You were going to send me away, weren’t you?”

It hit him then, like a circus performer’s mallet. If his levels were falling, he might be able to avoid the grim fate waiting for him. The hunger’s hold on him would lessen—though it might never ease completely.

Blade scooped her up and swept her toward the bed. “Absolutely not,” he replied with a straight face. “You come into me life and turned it topsy-turvy. I ain’t ’bout to let you go.”

He tossed her on the sheets and followed her down. Honoria laughed beneath him, fighting at his hands.

“Wait! Wait, let me think.”

Baffled by the sudden push—as opposed to her very recent pulling—he drew back, kneeling over her. “What for?”

That same burning intensity fired her dark eyes. “That’s it.
I’m
the only true difference in your life.”

“I don’t see as ’ow that’d make any changes to me virus count,” he said dubiously.

“I’m the only recent change to your diet.” She sat up. “Don’t you see? There must be something in my blood that created the change. The only thing I can think of is that I was vaccinated. That’s got to be it. Once father developed a vaccination that worked, he offered it to the staff and volunteer feeders at the Institute. Some accepted, some didn’t. Three of the test subjects started showing a decrease in their levels, but others didn’t. Perhaps those three subjects were feeding from volunteers who had been vaccinated.” Excitement shone in her eyes. She had never been more beautiful to him than in this moment. “Father must have guessed. He kept speaking of a common element in that last week. He could barely sleep, barely eat…”

Honoria could contain herself no longer. She bounded off the bed, hands gesturing wildly. “The vaccination doesn’t affect blue bloods. We tried that. Yet when a blue blood drinks the blood of a vaccinated person…” She looked around, raking a hand through her hair. “A notebook. Do you have a notebook?”

Blade let his head sink back onto the bed, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “I’ve just returned from the dead and you want a bleedin’ notebook?”

Her wide brown eyes blinked at him as she slowly returned from whatever mental plane she’d momentarily existed on. “You don’t understand. I have to get this down.”

“I’ve got time.” He rested his arms beneath his head and lazily surveyed her. “Charlie’s got time. It’s enough to know that me blood levels are goin’ down. But you and me, we needs to ’ave a little chat. I’m feelin’ awful lonely and neglected over ’ere.”

Honoria’s gaze dropped to his waist—and the tented suggestion beneath the sheet. Blazing intellect faded from her gaze, replaced by a sultry look that made him freeze. She climbed onto the bed, dragging her skirts up over him as she straddled his hips. “You poor, starved blue blood. Or should I refer to you as Sir Henry now?”

“Only,” he murmured, drawing her hand against his mouth, “if I may refer to you as Lady Rathinger.”

Her breath caught. A little hint of vulnerability shot through her eyes. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

Blade kissed her palm, stroking his tongue across the tactile skin. Honoria shuddered a little, her lips parting and her gaze blurring with desire.

“Aye. Whoever thought I’d get ’ammered for life? But it’s the only way I can be certain of reinin’ in your ’eadstrong impulses,” he replied. “No more facin’ down vampires, ravenous dukes, or a hall full o’ blue bloods. I’ve died a thousand deaths over the last few weeks. Me poor old ticker can’t ’andle so much trauma.”

“Then you must not face such dangers either,” she told him, leaning down and brushing her nose against his with a smile. “For I only do battle for those I love.”

Blade caught her face in his hands and kissed her. Hard. He was almost afraid to let her go, for fear that the words had been nothing more than a hallucination—like his memories of them from the Ivory Tower.

Mine
, whispered the dark little voice inside his head. His darker half. Himself, he finally realized. The part that was ruled by his passions and hungers. A part he had once feared and fought.

I
am
the
darkness
, he thought wonderingly and tugged at Honoria’s laces. She laughed, the dress pulling free and revealing the crisp white cotton of her stays.

But the only ones who would ever have to fear him now would be his enemies. Not her. Never her.

Ours
, he corrected, finally surrendering to the inevitable.
Always
ours
.

Read on for an excerpt from

Heart of Iron

by Bec McMaster

London, 1879

Fog clung to the Thames like a light-skirt to a rich patron. Here and there, gaslight gleamed, flashing will-o’-the-wisp in the shrouding pea soup mist. It was the perfect night not to be seen.

Will Carver loped across rooftops and gables, leaping across an alley and coming to a halt behind a chimney near Brickbank.

A man landed lightly on the tiles beside him, breathing hard from the exertion. He wore black leather from head to toe, and the only weapons he carried were a pair of razors, tucked in his belt. “Bloody ’ell. You tryin’ to run me to death?” Blade muttered.

The words were quiet, but the sound carried in the still night. Will’s lip curled, and he glared at his master.

“They won’t be listenin’ for
us
, bucko.” Blade straightened, staring at the ruddy glow ahead of them. “Not with that burnin’. And none of ’em ’as your hearin’.”

A column of red glowed against the night sky ahead, barely muted by the fog. Every time Will breathed, he could taste the ash in the air. Ahead, a massive brick gate and wall blocked the way into the City. A company of metaljackets paced in front of the gate, gaslight gleaming off the shining steel plates of their armored chests. With the flame-thrower appendages in place of their left arms, they looked formidable enough to keep the general rabble at bay. They were, however, automatons and not human.

He’d long since learned they didn’t look up.

“Over?” he asked.

“I got me pardon now,” Blade said. “Could waltz right on through them gates, and they’d not say a word.” The devilish light in his eyes said he wanted to try. There was nothing Blade liked better than thumbing his nose at the blue bloods who ruled the city.

“Yeah, well, we ain’t all that lucky,” Will reminded him. “I’ve still got a price on me head.”

Blade sighed, eyeing the massive edifice. “Over it is then.”

“You’re gettin’ lazy.”

“I should be at ’ome, tucked up with me cheroot and a nice glass of mulled blud-wein.” What he didn’t add was that he most likely wouldn’t have been doing either of those things. If the fire hadn’t called them out, Blade would be in bed with his wife, Honoria.

Will took a few steps back. No point him being at home. The flat he rented these days was cold and uninviting. There was nothing for him to go back to.

A wide leap took him sailing across the street and onto a rooftop beside the gate. Taking a running start, he bounded up and over the wall before the guard on top had finished shaking out the flame on his match. Human eyes were sometimes just as bad as the automatons.

Boot steps echoed him on the rooftops as he flitted lightly through the night. Fog parted around him, drifting in his wake, but he was moving too fast for anyone watching to see.

Here in the City, the streets were a touch wider, the buildings not as jammed together as they were in the Whitechapel rookery he called home. Blood rushed through his veins as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop. He’d been cooped up for too long; he needed this.

Screams caught his ear, and the organized shouts of people trying to marshal water pumps. Little snowflakes of ash floated through the air, almost thick enough to choke a man. Will paused in the crook of a chimney.

Ahead, the world looked like it was on fire. Billowing gouts of orange flame licked at the skies, and a thick dark pall of smoke hung over the river. Lines of people manned water pumps desperately, trying to stop the flames from spreading.

“Jaysus,” Blade cursed as he knelt at Will’s side.

“The draining factories,” Will said. “Someone’s fired the draining factories.”

It was unthinkable. The line of factories down by the river were owned by the ruling Echelon to filter and store the blood gathered in the blood taxes. This would be a huge blow to them.

Blade’s eyes narrowed. “You and I ought to get out of ’ere quick-smart.” His nostrils flared. “The place’ll be swarmin’ in metaljackets before we know it.”

Will backed up a step. He knew what Blade wasn’t saying. Two more perfect scapegoats couldn’t be found. Most of the aristocratic Echelon had been furious with the Queen’s pardon and knighthood of Blade three years ago. And Will was just a slave-without-a-collar to their eyes.

A clink of metal caught his ears. Iron booted feet on distant cobbles. A legion of metaljackets by the sound of it. “Go,” he snapped, shoving Blade in the back.

Blade needed no urging. He scrambled up the tiles on the roof, a break in the clouds bathing him in moonlight. Once, a few years ago, his hair would have lit up like a beacon. Now it had dulled to a light brown, and his skin was no longer as pale as marble.

Will followed at his heels in an easy lope, his ears alert to the slightest sound behind them. They’d seen what they came to see. No doubt word of it’d be all over the streets by morning.