Renegade

To Atticus Leclair, whose creativity makes me smile.

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Renegade
© 2013 by Amy Carol Reeves.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

First e-book edition © 2013

E-book ISBN:

First Edition
First Printing, 2013

Book design by Bob Gaul
Cover illustration © 2012 Dominick Finelle/The July Group
Interior map illustration © Chris Down

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Acknowledgments

As always, I am so grateful to my awesome agent, Jessica Sinsheimer.

Renegade
would not be in its current shape without my very insightful editor, Brian Farrey-Latz. And much thanks to Sandy Sullivan at Flux for helping me with copyedits.

Finally, I owe so much to my husband, Shawn Reeves; during the heaviest writing stages, he talked me off of very high cliffs.

Prologue

O
RKNEY
I
SLES–
M
ARCH 1889

S
he strayed further from her home than she had in years. Her gills pulsated with the waves as she moved along the ocean floor.

A storm raged far above her. It might have killed any human on the surface. But she slid safely along the calmer depths—her fingertips, breasts, and belly grazing the surfaces of sand and shells, her dragon-tail propelling her forward.

She paused as she felt something, anchoring herself into the sand with her claws and talons. In the watery darkness, she smiled fondly. It was a skull fragment. She had found these many times before, and she would keep it as she had the others.

Her keeper had not visited her for four months. This was a long absence, unusual. She felt a sense of trouble for him now. An intuition. When he had come to her last, in early November, he had seemed distant, distracted. She cared little for his murderous duties or his love conquests, but she worried. She remembered how agitated and distracted he had been almost twenty years ago, over that situation with that woman. She strained to remember her name. Caroline? And then jealousy pulsed within her … they had wanted the daughter.

And she hungered again as she had not in twenty years.

For blood.

PART I

“ … O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college like a man’s,
And I would teach them all that men are taught;
We are twice as quick!”

—The Princess

One

L
ONDON,
K
ENSINGTON
C
OURT–
M
ARCH 1889

T
wilight was the worst time for me.

That’s when the guilt seeped through my veins like an illness. Nearly every night, I was plagued with dreams about the murders I had committed. I couldn’t get the images out of my mind—myself, crouched up in that hothouse tree. A knife in my mouth as I waited for Julian Bartlett. Blood from John Perkins and Marcus Brown smeared on my face and skirts. I vividly remembered the feel of the knife cutting through their flesh, tearing muscle, and hitting bone. The memories made me nauseated. In my mind, I was no better than Max as he stalked women on the streets last autumn.

But then, I always told myself, the Conclave had murdered my mother. They had planned to execute William and Simon. They would have gone on killing God knows how many innocent human beings during their immortal lives, all for the greater good.

A Posse Ad Esse.

It almost made me laugh.

That morning, as always, I went ahead and got out of bed weighted by my guilt and conflicting feelings. This guilt had become a bit of an albatross around my neck, and I didn’t know how to atone for it.

As I dressed, I studied Mother’s portrait. My real father, the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had painted it. In my mind, it was his most daring portrait—Caroline Westfield, society belle, as a lamia, nude from her waist up. Grandmother couldn’t bear seeing it, so I kept it in my closet for myself. Max had sent it to me, so it was a gift from the devil … yet I cherished it nonetheless.

As I put on my hospital work dress and pinafore, I allowed myself to think of Max. Except for the delivery of the portrait, neither William nor Simon nor I had heard from him for over four months. But I knew he was around. Somewhere.
Au revoir
, he had signed his note. We would meet again, and when we did, it would be my blood he would want. I had killed his Conclave. The elixir and elixir formula had certainly disappeared in the fire. He had lost the means of sustaining his immortality.

I shuddered as I pinned my hair back and forced myself to mentally prepare for my day. It would be my first day returning to work at Whitechapel Hospital. I hadn’t been there since returning to Grandmother’s house after that terrible night with the Conclave. Then, soon after Christmas, Grandmother had fallen very ill with pneumonia. I attributed it to the stresses she had endured that autumn—our many arguments, her worry about me, my friend Mariah’s death. My own guilt about how I’d bucked against her rules overwhelmed me. Yet I knew that I couldn’t completely conform to her lifestyle. The boundaries must be set—at breakfast, I would tell her that I was resuming my work at the hospital. Grandmother had been feeling better; she had been stronger. In fact, I could hear her now, downstairs, fussing heartily at Ellen, her hare-brained maid.

I hurried out of my bedroom and descended the stairs, anxious to begin work at the hospital.

“Where are you going?” Grandmother asked, alarmed. She paused as she ate her eggs, staring hard at my black work dress, at the folded pinafore in my arms.

When I faced her, I saw that her complexion already seemed better. She was thinner, but not quite so pale. She would be fine now without me attending to her all day.

“I’m returning to the hospital,” I said, swallowing my tea too fast and burning my throat a bit. I felt hurried as I ate.

“The murders, getting stabbed in the leg, those eviscerated women, were not enough to keep you away?”

“No, Grandmother. And there haven’t been any murders for several months. I’ll be fine. I must return to work. If you remember, I need to apply to medical school soon. I have not been at the hospital since October, and I need the experience.”